10714

DEATH IN ANCIENT CHINA

CHINA STUDIES

Published for the Institute for Chinese StudiesUniversity of Oxford

EDITORS:

GLEN DUDBRIDGE

FRANK PIEKE

VOLUME 8

DEATH IN ANCIENTCHINA

The Tale of One Man’s Journey

BY

CONSTANCE A. COOK

BRILLLEIDEN • BOSTON

2006

Original cover illustration designed by Heather A. Baldwin features a scene from theBaoshan lacquer box painting against the fabric of a Mashan silk shroud (adapted fromHubeishen Jingsha tielu kaogudui 1991b, foldout and Pi Daojian 1995, color insert iv).

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN 1570–1344ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15312 7ISBN-10: 90 04 15312 8

© Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The NetherlandsKoninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers,

Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments.................................................................................... viiList of Figures and Tables…................................................................. viiiChapter One Introduction.................................................................… 1Chapter Two Death as Journey in Ancient China....................…… 19Chapter Three Entering the Earth.…….......................................… 43

1 Shao Tuo’s Burial.…...........................................................….… 47 1.1 The Inner Coffins……..................................................… 50 1.2 The Outer Coffin…..................................................……. 54 1.3 The Eastern Compartment…........................................... 55 1.4 The Southern Compartment…......................................... 58 1.5 The Western Compartment…......................................… 59 1.6 The Northern Compartment …....................................... 60

2 Sacred Space: The Inner and Outer...................................…… 63Chapter Four Shao Tuo’s Departure…….................................…… 79

1 The Divination Text………........................................................ 83 1.1 Baoshan Terms for Rituals, Offerings, and Spirits...….. 98

2 The Lacquer Painting…….................................................…... 119Chapter Five The Topography of the Afterlife……............……. 129Chapter Six Epilogue…………........................................................ 149Appendix One Baoshan Divination Text….............................…... 153 1.1 Event I: 318 BCE Early Summer ...........................…... 154 1.2 Event II: 317 BCE Early Spring ............................…... 165 1.3 Event III: 317 BCE Late Spring ............................….... 168 1.4 Event IV: 317 BCE Midsummer............................….... 170 1.5 Event V: 317 BCE Midwinter.... ............................….... 178 1.6 Event VI: 317 BCE Midwinter ............................…...... 185 1.7 Event VII: 316 BCE Early Summer .....................….... 189 1.8 Event VIII: 316 BCE Early Summer.....................….... 208Appendix Two Baoshan Inventory Text…............................……. 211

1 Bamboo Strips 251-277, 440.............................…....……….. 2122 Bamboo Plaque…………………..........................…....….… 245

vi contents

Appendix Three Wangshan Divination Text….................….…… 249Bibliography…….............................................................................….. 265Index…………............................................................................…….. 281

viicontents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Lehigh University and the Chiang Ching-kuo Founda-tion for the support and the time needed in order to finish this book. In addition I thank my colleagues and friends at Wuhan University (espe-cially Chen Wei, Xu Shaohua, and Yang Hua), Hubei Provincial Museum, Jingzhou Museum, and the Hubei Archaeological Society for providing opportunities to view the Baoshan materials and for sharing their pub-lications. That this manuscript is at all readable is due to the kind edito-rial guidance of anonymous readers, as well as that of Sarah Allan, John Major, Glen Dudbridge, and my husband, Douglas Baldwin. I wish to give special thanks to Doug, Fern, Heather, and Sylvia Baldwin for their support and patience.

The book is dedicated to the powerful spirits of Professor Michel Strickmann, Father Paul L-M Serruys, Sue Glover, and Jeanne Vreeland Rusby Cook.

LIST OF MAPS, FIGURES, AND TABLES

Map Jiangling Area Tombs.............................................……………. 9Figure 1 Tomb Compartments………….......................………….. 49Figure 2 Signs on the Middle Coffin……......................………….. 51Figure 3 Décor on E. and W. Ends of Inner Coffin….................... 52Figure 4 Tianxingguan Tomb 2, Sculpture Bases

and Sculptures..............................................................................…. 53Figure 5 Tianxingguan Tomb 2, Frog-Bird Base….......................... 54Figure 6 Baoshan Tomb Attendant…..........................................….. 56Figure 7 Double-headed Pig-Dragon Boxes….............................… 57Figure 8 Painted Leather Chariot Décor..................................…...... 59Figure 9 Shao Tuo’s Personal Tiger Ornament.................................. 61Figure 10 Shao Tuo’s Personal Ornaments and Staff…................... 61Figure 11 Departure Ceremony on Round Lacquer Box….......... 120Figure 12 Lacquer Box Scenes...................…................................... 122Figure 13 Han Funeral Painting from Mawangdui…..................... 123Figure 14 Lacquer Screen, from Wangshan Tomb 1….................. 136Figure 15 Zhenmushou Tomb-Guardian Sculpture,

from Wangshan Tomb 2….............................................................. 137Figure 16 Bird Taking Off from Crouching Tiger....................…. 143Figure 17 Bird-Man Flying on a Bird…........................................... 144Table 1 The Chu Calendar ….............................................................. 93Table 2 The Baoshan Ritual Calendar and Five-Phase

(wuxing) Correlates….......................................................................... 94Table 3 Rituals, Offerings, and Deities by Divination Event….... 102Table 4 Names of Ritualists and Their Methods by

Divination Event….......................................................................... 105

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

In the words of Nobel-prize novelist Gao Xingjian when he viewed the ruins of Jinan city: “If there was not this harsh glare of the noon sun and all the ghosts had crawled out, the night markets would no doubt be very lively.” 1

During the Han, Huan Tan (c. 43 BCE-CE 28) observed: “In the capital city of Chu, chariots hub to hub, people shoulder to shoulder, in markets and streets, they push up against each other shouting, fresh of dress in the morning, worn out by evening.” 2

West of the Han River and north of the Yangzi River lie the overgrown mud ruins of the ancient metropolis of Jinan , now in modern Jiangling county , Hubei province . It was also known as Nanying , Cai Ying , or just Ying, “Mount.” 3 During its heyday, from the fifth to third centuries BCE, this sixteen-square-ki-lometer walled and moated city of 300,000 served as the political, eco-nomic, and religious center for the state of Chu , a state whose culture emerged out of a synergy of Neolithic Yangzi, Han, and Huai River stone- and jade-working cultures and northern bronze-making cultures. Trade already established with Yellow River Neolithic cultures led naturally to the importing of bronze culture from the north at differ-ent points during the Shang (1600-1046 BCE) and Western Zhou (1046-771 BCE) periods. Previous to the rise of Ying, the high culture of Chu was centered to the north, in southwestern Henan; after the fall of Ying to the invading Qin general Bai Qi in 278 BCE, the political center—represented by the remaining generations of the royal family—moved farther and farther east until by 223 BCE they were over-

1 Gao 2000, 318.2 Xin lun (SBBY), 16a. The capital of Chu referred to in the text was the one

in E , the traditional reference for Hubei, versus the later capitals farther east.3 The exact location of Ying from the seventh through the sixth centuries BCE is

a source of debate; see Gao and Liu 1995, 93-133; Blakeley 1999, 10-12.

chapter one2

come in the eastern capital of Shouchun , in modern Shouxian , Anhui .4The archaeological site of Ying confirms the existence at one time

of a complex and vibrant culture that seems to have reached its most florid state during Chu King Wei’s reign ( , 339-329 BCE). Inside its twenty kilometers of thick walls, the city was divided into areas with palaces and temples (in the southeast), elite residences (in the northeast), common residences (in the northwest), markets, workshops for pottery, ornaments, lacquerware and bronze ware, and older non-elite burials (all in the western section). The residents included peoples of mixed sta-tus—political elite, military officers and soldiers, merchants, craftsmen, peasants, bonded servants, and slaves—and of mixed ethnicity, people described in Han sources by their styles of hair, clothing, speech, or be-havior as either Hua Xia (northern), Man (southern), Yue (southeastern coastal), or Ba (western, upper Yangzi valley).5 Outside the walls, the city was surrounded by farming settlements, craftworking areas, and elite burial grounds. People could travel into the city by boat, chariot, or foot through a system of eight gates, three with canals. Ma-jor access to the city was through gates in the southeastern and north-western sections of the wall. Besides three nearby rivers, residents had access to numerous wells for fresh water and a system of gutters and pipes to flush out waste.6

Extensive burial grounds lie within roughly ten kilometers outside the city in all directions. Although no royal tombs have been found yet, the tombs of many rich elite were clustered in the more distant hills, for example, those at modern Jingmen Jishan (eleven kilometers to the north), Jiangling Balingshan (four kilometers to the west), and Zhijiang Qingshan (farther west). All of these were liminal areas distant from residences inside the city. Commoners’ burial grounds, however, were found all around the city within a distance of about five kilometers—a difference that suggests that the spirits who were more powerful in life may have been considered more dangerous to the living in death. The heads of the deceased in the richest burials during the Warring States period (475-221 BCE) tended to face east, whereas those in commoners’ tombs faced south. This distinguishing

4 See Blakeley 1999, 13-19; Cook 1995, 241-77.5 Gao and Liu 1995, 121-29; see also Peters 1999, 99-115. For a discussion of

markers of ethnicity, see Peters 2002. 6 Gao and Liu 1995, 119-33.

introduction 3

trait of a Chu elite is considered a Chu ethnic marker. It is also found in burial grounds in the Chunqiu-period (790-432 BCE)7 sites of Xi chuan

, Henan, and in Dangyang , places northwest of Jiangling. War-ring States-period elite burials had mounds, whereas those of lower rank generally followed a Chunqiu-period custom of no mounds.8 The con-sistent focus on the east allows archaeologists to track the trajectory of Chu culture over time.

The moist climate and clayey soil of this area of Hubei have preserved certain artifacts that elsewhere in China might have perished. While to us the phoenix and tiger designs embroidered on silk, the lacquer bird and dragon drums, the horned tomb guardians, and the hand-written records all express an exotic culture, the obvious trade of ideas and goods and the shards of evidence found elsewhere remind us that much of what we find in Jiangling mirrors culture in other regions of ancient China.9People were drawn to the city of Ying from all directions. While trades people and farmers exchanged goods in the markets, the Chu court, like all regional courts, hosted itinerant “guests” (ke ) or “knights-errant” (shi ), men whose knowledge of military, occult, craft, and ritual arts was highly prized.10 Artifacts and texts from the elite burials reveal a rich, complex cosmopolitan culture, one filled with local color but also in touch with intellectual currents of the times. While Chu tombs pre-served brightly lacquered wooden sculptures, the like of which has not been found in Yellow River Valley or Central Plains (Zhongyuan )tombs, they also contained texts that scholars identify as belonging to mainstream or splinter groups of Daoism, Mohism, and Confucianism (Ruism).11 Besides philosophical texts, fourth and third century BCE

7 These dates cover the reigns of sixteen Chu kings. See Loewe and Shaughnessy 1999, 16-17.

8 Guo 1995, 30, 41-42, 109-21.9 For an introduction to Chu culture in English, see Cook and Major 1999. In Chi-

nese, the best introduction is the 12-vol. series Chu xue wenku published by Hubei Jiaoyu Press in 1995: Gao and Liu (cities and architecture), Gao Zhixi (south-ern expansion), Guo Dewei (burials), Liu Hehui (eastern expansion), Liu (economy), Ma Shizhi (Central Plains Chu culture), Peng Hao (weaving and clothing), Pi Dao-jian (art), Zhao Dexin (money), Zhao Hui (cultural background of the Chuci), Zhang Zhengming (history).

10 For an introduction to Warring States thought, see Nivison 1999, and Harper 1999.

11 Studies of the Guodian bamboo-slip texts and those preserved in the Shanghai Museum, both most likely from the same or nearby tombs in Jingmen , are nu-merous: e.g., www.BambooSilk.org; Allan and Williams 2000; Wuhan daxue Zhongguo wenhua yanjiuyuan 2000; the book series Xinchu jianbo yanjiu congshu

chapter one4

tombs contained almanacs, divination texts, and tomb inventory texts that reveal another layer of cultural knowledge and religious concern only hints of which have been preserved in transmitted texts.12

Through an analysis of the contents and manuscripts found in one richly furnished Jiangling-area tomb belonging to Shao Tuo ,13 a Chu court officer, this book shows the way in which the Jiangling tombs re-flect a society of layered beliefs. We find conservative burial traditions that can be traced back in time at least to the earlier Zhou culture in the north and northeast, if not farther back to dominant cultures to the east—the middle and eastern Yellow River and Yangzi River valleys. The Chu nexus of economy and power pooled numerous regional influences into what may be seen emerging from the material cultural remains as an exuberant local style—one that reflects both ancient beliefs and contem-porary, evolving naturalistic laws. We see that hierarchies of ancestors contended with spirits of the surrounding landscape and were organized along the abstract lines of a ritual calendar sensitive to the cardinal direc-tions, the seasons, and nascent metamorphic systems of cosmic phases of “elements” and “energies.” The records of diviners documenting the last three years of Shao Tuo’s life reveal the role of the Chu elite (as seen from the viewpoint of their physical and spiritual technicians) in the evo-lution of early Chinese cosmologies. These records, read in turn within the context of their subject’s burial site, provide us a glimpse of a certain local color, or “lewd rites” (yinsi , as later northern accounts referred to them),14 and of ancient Chinese beliefs about death generally.

published by Hubei jiaoyu, beginning in 2002; and Shanghai daxue gudai wenming yanjiu zhongxin et al. 2002.

12 The most thorough discussion of this knowledge and of tomb texts and arti-facts indicating the sophistication of natural philosophy and occult thought during this period and slightly later is by Harper 1999.

13 The Chinese graphs representing his name might also be read in modern Chi-nese as Zhao Ta. The graph shao is an alternative writing for Zhao , the posthu-mous name of the king from which Shao Tuo claimed descent (and hence derived his name). According to Hubei 1991, the tomb occupant was of the Huabei (northern Chinese) East Asian physical type (vol. 1, 68 and app. 3).

14 See Cook 1990, 267-81, Cook and Blakeley 1999, 3-4. “Lewd Rites” are ex-plained in the Liji as rites to natural deities that are performed by those of inappro-priate rank or with the wrong animal (also chosen according to rank) (“Qu Li” xia

, ; Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 1, 1.28a). In later accounts, the term refers to the use of groups of female shamans who dance and beat drums (see the “Chen ji” , years 584-88, in Zizhi tongjian 178, 5478; also Hanquan at http://210.69.170.100/s25/index.htm).

introduction 5

The tomb’s records also provide information on the social status and role of the deceased and in turn provide a context for understanding the development of cosmological symbolism in early China. For example, the Baoshan records, like Western Zhou records, reflect sensitivity to the dimensions of inside and outside, up and down, the cardinal directions, and time. It seems that boundaries between these dimensions represented dangerous liminal spaces linked with spiritual harm and even death. The design of Chu, Zhou, and Shang tombs as well as the paleographic re-cords of these cultures reflect these sensitivities. Yet, when we compare the Baoshan mortuary evidence with the rituals described in ritual texts presumably known in some form by the time of his death (texts that would not be collated into our received form until centuries later), we find both continuities and discrepancies that may reflect regional variation from a purported standard, an earlier form of that standard, or simply a time when rituals varied. In this sense, fourth century BCE Chu prac-tice was no different from elsewhere during the Warring States period, and was even—as Michael Loewe has remarked for the Han period—a time when people might have harbored mutually inconsistent practices, ideas, and beliefs.15

This man of Chu—Shao Tuo—was a member of the elite related distantly through his father to the Chu royal house. As such, he was one of many royal officers who, his divination records note, “entered and ex-ited” (churu ) the palace and city walls while negotiating government affairs. We know from Western Zhou bronze inscriptions that officials, usually masters of military and ritual arts (shi ), were charged with the dangerous missions of liaison with peoples beyond the capital city walls and its suburbs to aid in the Zhou mission to quell the Four Regions (sifang )—the cosmic area surrounding the center, the locus of the king.16 Besides the obvious danger of contacting tainted spirits among subdued populations (often referred to as “corpses” shi , an early graph for yi , an eastern people), we know from later texts that exiting a gate required spells of protection against specific demons.17

Shao Tuo traveled a great deal during his lifetime, settling land and criminal disputes for the Chu court at Ying, and, according to the divina-

15 Loewe 2005, 100.16 Examples of these charges are too numerous to list here but are explored in

Cook 2005b; see also Cook 2003. On sifang as a cosmic plan during the Shang period, see Allan 1991, 74-111. For a discussion of it as a spiritual landscape represented in a terrestrial space, see Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2003.

17 Harper 1985, 479; Harper 1998, 168; Hu Wenhui 1998, 1-4; Cook 2003.

chapter one6

tion text found in his tomb, may have incurred the wrath of any number of gods and demons. He died between the ages of thirty-five and forty and was buried in 316 BCE. Shao Tuo’s tomb (Baoshan Tomb 2, in Jing-men), an undisturbed and well-preserved tomb, was discovered in 1986, sixteen kilometers north of Jinan city and two kilometers west of the Baojia River, a tributary to the Yangzi River. The burial ground, which included tombs of people at various levels of social status, was most likely a family graveyard. Shao Tuo claimed a royal heritage descending from the Chu King Zhao (r. 515-489 BCE), eight kings earlier than King Huai (r. 328-299 BCE), the king he served as Minister on the Left (zuoyin ).18 Given the quality and quantity of grave goods, the fortunes of Shao Tuo’s family peaked with his career. He was buried in the honored center of the graveyard. On either side of his tomb, in tombs with fewer grave goods, were buried his wife, male descendants and the descendants’ wives.

Shao’s tomb, consisting of multilayered inner coffins nested inside a chambered outer coffin, was buried under a tumulus of eight layers of different colored clays. His body was wrapped in layers of fine clothing and placed inside three coffins tightly bound shut. These inner coffins were placed inside a double-layered wooden house (the outer coffin) con-sisting of four chambers—one in each direction—covered with a plank roof in a clockwise swirling pattern. Items placed inside each chamber represented different aspects of his needs after death. These items will be discussed in the context of contemporary beliefs concerning death and in the light of such cosmic schemes as the Four Regions, as inher-ited from the Zhou, and the Yin-Yang Five Phases (wuxing )that would fully develop later, in the Han.19

The placement of the items in the four chambers of the tomb, each representing a direction or Region, reveals a sensitivity to a system of natural agents or elements that imbued the spiritual force or energy of the Four Regions and the center, making up a cycle of Five Phases or “Processes” (wood, metal, fire, earth, water). This system would by Han

18 The office of yin during the Western Zhou period was that of a record keeper or archivist inside the court, but was greatly expanded in later times; see Cook 1995.

19 For the transition of these beliefs from the Zhou up through the Han in terms of political ideology, see A. Wang 2000; but for a detailed analysis of the Five Phase belief system, see Graham 1989, 313-70, and Harper 1999, 860-66. For the transla-tion of wuxing as the “Five Processes,” see Graham 1989, 325-26, and Chard 1999, 240-41. Useful studies of the wuxing system include Granet 1953, Sivin 1967, Major 1993, Kalinowski 1998-99, A. Wang 2000, Li Ling 2000.

introduction 7

times correlate to a binary system of Yang (light/life), with its “award, or accumulated power (de ),” and Yin (dark/death), standing for “punish-ment, or reduction (xing ),” as well as to general aspects of time (stars, seasons, and days of the calendar).20 During the Han period, these direc-tions would each correlate to a divine animal, and in the case of the East and the West, deities that controlled access to “deathlessness.” 21 The basic symbolism that evolved associating the East and South with Yang and the West and North with Yin clearly informed the designers of Shao’s tomb. Records placed inside his tomb suggest a nascent awareness of the Phases or correlations with the calendar of natural energies, qi or “vapors,” which Donald Harper explains as “essential resources of the Earth provided by Heaven for human sustenance.” 22 The Baoshan divi-nation text confirms Harper’s suspicion that stem and branch calendar correlations for all Five Phases existed in the fourth century BCE and were used by astrologers, calendrical experts, and diviners.23 The most important records were placed in the northern chamber, the one most associated with death in the Yin-Yang scheme.

Han texts claim that Yin-Yang theory was popularized in northeast-ern courts by Zou Yan (305-240 BCE)24 but had ancient roots, per-haps as early as the Shang period, when the cosmos was viewed as Four Regions, each Region representing a direction and inhabited by a spirit that had to be appeased with the “god sacrifice” (di ), a sacrifice linked in later ritual texts with ancestor worship. During the Western Zhou pe-riod the king conducted court rituals with his back to the north. His sup-plicants faced him and received his “shadow” or “gift” (xiu ). By Shao Tuo’s time (fourth century BCE), the scheme of the Four Regions had lost its political relevance yet retained its religious symbolism. By the end of the third century BCE, the abstract scheme of correlated natural and numerological signs called the Five Phases replaced the static Four Re-gions scheme. In the Five Phases scheme, the cosmic natural elements flowed in a circular motion and were linked to the signs of the ritual calendar (10 “stem” signs that cycle in combination with 12 “branch” signs to make a 60-day cycle).25

20 Harper 1999, 861. For the Han concepts of de and xing, see Major 1987, Ka-linowski 1998-99.

21 For a brief overview of these and their relationship to Han funerary practice, see Loewe 2005, 101-02.

22 Harper 1999, 863; for a complete discussion see Harper 1998, 69, 77-90.23 Harper 1999, 864.24 See discussion in Harper 1999, 824-25.25 For an explanation of the Four Regions (or Four Quadrates) scheme and its

chapter one8

The symbolism of the directions influenced the layout of Ying city but the concepts of inner and outer space influenced the separation of the living from the dead, civilization from wilderness. We see that mar-kets were located in the northern part of the city, the least auspicious direction, but inside the city walls. The elite lived south of the markets but were buried far outside the city wall. Elite burial grounds are located in the forested hills beyond the city walls: north in the Ji Mountains, west in the Baling mountains, east in the Yutai and Sun mountains, and south in the hills closer to the Yangzi River.

My book focuses on several important bamboo-strip texts. According to these records, placed in his tomb, Shao’s duties in the state administra-tion concerned the economic and legal management of local life.26 For example, his office handled household registration, which affected the collection of taxes and the control of labor. These duties necessitated the arbitration of civil suits,27 as well as making records of grain and metal allocations. Besides details of his public life, his tomb also included two lengthy personal records that concern his death. The first of these28 de-tails the efforts of a group of diviners to negotiate with ghosts and spir-its over the period of three years to determine which had cursed Shao Tuo, causing his terminal illness. The second text29 lists the objects that ritualists packed into his tomb as preparations for the journey into the afterlife. Both texts are translated in full in Appendices One and Two and discussed in the main section of this book.

Since the 1970s, scholars have debated the significance of the plac-ing of texts into tombs, as bamboo and silk texts were discovered in a number of tombs, and thus versions of received texts, as well as hereto-fore unknown texts, were revealed. The most famous examples belonged to the extremely rich underground archive discovered in 1974 in Tomb 3 at Mawangdui in Changsha , Hunan—a city whose cul-ture was clearly influenced by that of the earlier Ying metropolis up the Yangzi River. This tomb belonged to a man, who, like Shao Tuo, traveled a great deal during his lifetime.30 Since this discovery, scholars have pro-

Shang origins, see Allan 1991. For a discussion of its evolution into Five Phases and the subsequent use in late Warring States and Han politics, see Major 1993, A. Wang 2000. For a description of Warring States-period natural philosophy, see Harper 1999a.

26 See Chen Wei 1996a, 21-66.27 See Weld 1999, 85-95.28 Strips 197-249.29 Strips 251-440 and a bamboo plaque summary of some of the contents.30 This is inferred from the maps in his tomb showing trade and military sites in

introduction 9

posed various theories to explain why the ancient Chinese placed texts in tombs. Those that might apply to the Baoshan case include: (1) texts would be used by the deceased in the afterlife,31 (2) texts would be used

by other spirits to protect the newly deceased,32 (3) texts were testimony of the deceased’s status and merit, and (4) texts of the deceased could be isolated from the living without destroying them.33 If we look at the earlier Zhou tradition of “records of merit ” (mieli or fali ) cast into sacrificial bronze vessels, which were both stored above ground in temples and below ground in tombs and caches, then tomb texts could indeed have served most of the above functions.34 Bronze inscriptions

Map. Jiangling Area TombsDesigned by Zhong Yin, Tan Xiaodong, and Barry Blakeley at Lehigh University; first published in Cook and Major 1999, 11; published here with permission of Hawaii University Press and the authors.

the region. For lists and discussions of the documents, maps, and texts with illustra-tions in Tomb 3, see Harper and Riegel 1976, and Lai 2003, 43-48.

31 Loewe 2005, 107, suggests this was the case for Han tomb occupants.32 Lewis 1999a, 17. For a study of the use of bronze inscriptions to form contrac-

tual relations between ancestors and their descendants, see Cook 1993; Cook 1997. For Chu bronze inscriptions, see Cook 1990.

33 Giele 2003, 428-31; Lewis 1999a, 20-23.34 See Cook 1993, 1997, 1999, and 2005b. Mittag makes a similar comparison be-

chapter one10

were addressed to the ancestral spirits. They described the accomplish-ments of the descendant, a gift-recipient rewarded for his merit or ser-vice to the royal Zhou mission of controlling the Four Regions. They typically ended with injunctions for proper ritual behavior, promises of continued sacrifices, and prayers for good fortune and long life. Zhou elite like Shao Tuo were buried with the ritual implements, food, cloth-ing, and weapons that were needed in the afterlife.35 Thus, the texts in Shao Tuo’s tombs perhaps represented not only his status and identity in life (and hence his position in the ancestral lineage after death)—the role possibly assumed by the administrative texts, but also a pledge for protection—the role of the divination and inventory texts. In this sense Zhou bronze inscriptions functioned much as Han mirrors did—as “highly powerful talismans.” 36

In Shao Tuo’s tomb the texts were scattered in different chambers, each of which reflected separate aspects of his social life—banquets, battles, travel, and personal—that would continue after death. This book suggests that the cosmological beliefs associated with directions or the supernatu-ral Four Regions determined the placement of the three texts (and other items) in the compartments for the use of Shao Tuo during his journey after death. In other words, we can not fully understand the role of these texts outside of their archaeological context.37 The Tomb Inventory Text (qiance / , as denoted by archaeologists), for example, was written after Shao’s death and was placed in the eastern and western compart-ments, the first intended for a feasting ceremony associated with greeting ancestral spirits (a ceremony termed chao or tiao ), and the second with sending off the spirit of the deceased (a ceremony called zu ). The western compartment was packed with the equipment he would need to journey into the spirit world. Yang Hua’s study of tomb inventory texts carefully divides them into two types—both of which we see in Baoshan. One type, the qiance, was recorded on bamboo strips and consists of an inventory of all items displayed during the funeral and intended for burial,

tween Qin bamboo books in tombs as a form of identity and Zhou “statements of merit” (see Falkenhausen 2003, 287).

35 See Cook 2005a and 2005b.36 Loewe 2005, 104. The mirror inscription translated by Loewe (103) can be bro-

ken down into three narrative sections that are very similar to bronze inscriptions. The first section describes the making of the vessel or mirror. The second section is the mantic statement, or “command” (ming ), and the third consists of prayers and blessings.

37 Giele 2003, 419, emphasizes this point as well.

introduction 11

including items used by the deceased during his life—items donated by guests for the funeral, and items prepared by his family especially for burial. These displays made up the sui funeral ritual. The other type, the feng , was usually recorded on boards (termed fang ). It was a sub-set of the qiance and consisted only of gifts (often with the name of the donor recorded). Not all of the items displayed at a funeral were buried in the tomb; some donated shrouds, for example, could even be used by the family for another funeral. This is why, Yang explains, that the items listed in the bamboo-strip inventory texts do not match up to the actual items placed in the tomb, whereas those on feng do.38 Other scholars sug-gest that the reason for the lack of pairing of the actual items placed in the tomb and those lists was due to the symbolic function of the text as a spiritual ledger, something that functioned much like “numinous vessels” (mingqi ), tomb equipment made for the funeral and not for human use, and thus an aid to separating the living from the dead.39

Yang Hua notes that both types of text were read out loud, but by dif-ferent ritualists, during the display of goods at the ancestral shrine before being packed into carts and chariots for the funeral parade to the tomb. First the feng was read by a ritual officer belonging to the host, or oldest son (zhuren zhi shi ) and then the entire qiance was read by a se-nior ritual officer (gongshi ).40 Lai Guolong notes that the audience for the reading included the ancestral spirits,41 the deceased, as well as the funeral participants. He equates this reading to the “announcement” (gao ) of the command (ming ) and gifts in the ancestral temples and shrines recorded in Shang and Zhou inscriptions. This is intriguing in the sense that the “announcements” recorded on Western Zhou-period bronzes did list the goods awarded the gift-recipient.42 The difference is that the Western Zhou-period gift-recipient was alive during the cer-emony (although in many cases these inscriptions would be buried with him when he died, or used above ground at memorial feasts) and that the “announcements” also listed the connection of the recipient to the

38 Yang Hua 1999 (rpt. 2004, 35-42). He admits that in some cases, particularly by Han times, these were mixed up.

39 Lai 2002, 67-100. See also Wu Hong’s study of the role of funerary art and this “boundary” (1994). This point is also made by Giele 2003, 433.

40 Yang Hua 1999, 35.41 The spirits might have been invoked through the process of wailing and the

ritual lighting and extinguishing of the lamp, which Lai shows were also buried with the dead for the spirit journey to the afterlife (Lai 2002, 56-57, 101-26).

42 Lai 2002, 56-60.

chapter one12

Zhou royal family and his service to the family, functioning as a eulogy both for his ancestors and the Zhou founder kings.43 None of the texts placed in Shao Tuo’s tomb sings of his merits in the eulogistic manner of bronze inscriptions. The administrative and divination texts, on the other hand, might be understood as “reflecting” his merit in that they document his service to the court, as did the Western Zhou inscriptions albeit in less detail. Also, like the bronze inscriptions, which were cast on the eating and drinking surfaces of sacrificial vessels, the gift lists were meant for both the living and the dead audiences, and, as such, functioned as “a declaration and affirmation of the bond between the deceased and the living.” 44

Lai claims that the disjunction between actual items placed in the tomb and those listed in the Inventory Text simply shows the blurring of the visual and verbal realms of human experience, allowing for an imagined afterlife.45 I would go one step further and suggest that the buried list, which we only assume was the same as the list read out loud, was for use by the deceased to present to officers in the otherworld at various points in his journey to Heaven—the final location of the spirits of properly buried high-ranked ancestors since antiquity. The length of these records, and, according to Yang Hua, even the length of the bamboo strips them-selves, represented the rank of the deceased. For this reason, inventory texts are the most common type of text found in tombs from the War-ring States to the Han era.46

Peter Nickerson has nicely articulated the role of texts in tombs within the context of second century CE Daoist mortuary ritual. He sees them as mingqi with an exorcist function. He sees Daoist mortuary ritual as a combined reflection of traditional mortuary ritual ideology and exor-cist rites for protecting the traveler. We can see that texts were involved in each stage of the journey of the spirit: separation from the land of the living, transition, and incorporation into the land of the dead.47 The “Announcement” (yiwen , literally a “movement text”) to the gods of the “exhausted lifespan” of a particular person functioned like an

43 See Cook 2005b.44 Lai 2002, 64-65, and his discussion, 56-65.45 Lai 2002, 65. Giele 2003, 420-22, remarks that it is never the case that the items

listed are all found in the tomb, whether a function of rot or simply nonexistence in the tomb from the beginning.

46 Giele 2003, 420, 435. Yang Hua 1999, 37, notes that over 24 examples of qianceare known, and 7 of these include feng boards.

47 Nickerson 2002, 64-73. This progression of the journey is confirmed by re-

introduction 13

itinerary: “his hun-soul will ascend to heaven, his form will enter the earth to dwell,” and he will go to such-and-such a tomb site in the local mountains. This text explains the role of texts buried with the deceased: “to wear at the waist the great scriptures, talismans, charts, and declara-tions… . He is carrying all of these back to the Grand Yin (Taiyin), along with winter and summer clothes, ornaments, and implements, altogether including (such and such) varieties, his pine coffin and the gear used for the funeral and the burial and the preparations therefore.” Then the texts placed in the tomb as “talisman” would guide him and order the lower gods “to greet and escort him, to his place of concealment.” The texts also served to identify him to the spirits after death and force them to protect and not harm him.48

Shao Tuo’s administrative and divination texts were placed in the northern compartment—the direction symbolically associated with Reg-isters of the Dead (siji ) as early as the second century CE49 and the direction in which the Zhou deceased often placed the heads of their deceased—with items reserved for him to wear on his person and that he most likely used during his lifetime. The role of texts in Shao Tuo’s tomb was probably not much different from that described by Nickerson for the Daoist ritual practiced over four hundred years later. Thus they can be understood in terms of the layout of his tomb (which facilitated the transition phase), and the movement of the spirit, described in Han texts as the hun . The movement of the spirit within the tomb before exiting might have been dictated by popular models of cosmic space, such as the Four Regions or Five Phases, mentioned above. The Nine Provinces (jiuzhou ), a geospatial variant of the Four Regions model described in late Warring States and Han-period texts was used in exor-cistic ritual and travel charms linked to sage king Yu . This model, as explained by Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann’s work, hints at the directional movement within the tomb, if we accept that the tomb design could be viewed as a rough reflection of this or another variant model.50

cent anthropological work on primary and secondary mortuary rituals; see Chesson 2001, 1-11.

48 See translation, Nickerson 2002, 65-66; from the Tang-period Yaoxiu keyi jielü chao , compiled by Zhu Faman .

49 The earliest correlations found in excavated and transmitted texts of the late Warring States and early Han period link the north with winter, cold, blackness, and water (see A. Wang 2000, 110, table 3.2). By the time of early medieval Daoism, north was the location of the Registers of the Dead and south, the Registers of the Living (see Brashier 1996, 134).

50 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2003a, 2003b.

chapter one14

Tomb design should also be considered as an extension of the mor-tuary ritual practiced above ground before his death. The only hint we have of this ritual for Shao Tuo is in the text that records the divinations and sacrifices created during the three years of his illness and death and in similar records found in contemporary tombs. Such records are quite different from elaborate rules for mortuary ritual recorded in the ritual texts for men of his rank. Yet even the latter texts reflect ancient practices regarding the treatment of the dead and possess a certain sensitivity to the sort of dimensions and directions reflected in the Baoshan material. All of this suggests a cosmological continuum between the Baoshan type of mortuary text and the later, received, texts.

In this book, I argue that once the tomb was closed and the space be-tween the living and the dead formally distinguished, his spirit was pre-sumed to emerge at some point from the inner coffin51 towards the rising sun, where he would greet ancestral spirits who would guide him on his journey. Then, as he moved about the four compartments of his outer coffin, as he might roam the cosmos, he would gather the implements needed for his dangerous journey outside the tomb or the four wooden chambers of his outer coffin. If the direction of movement was similar to the “route” through Nine Provinces described in the Shanhaijing

, then after emerging from the center to the east, he would travel north, west, and then south.52 If the route was similar to the “clockwise ‘round tour’” described in the “Yugong” chapter of the Shangshu , the spirit would begin in the north then travel east, south, center, west, and last of all in the northwest.53 The link of the northwest to spirit trans-formation is made explicit in Han-period cults and tales of Kunlun

Mountain—the magical omphalos for spirit transformation in the far northwest—which Sarah Allan linked to the element water and the Yellow Springs , the netherworld mentioned in Warring States texts.54

Although there seems little question, as described in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, that the spirit would end up in the Heavenly bu-reaucracy lined up by rank with his ancestors as aides to the High God

51 Han-period jade burial suits have a hole at the very top of the head, perhaps as an exit for the spirit (see Riegel 1999, 392).

52 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2003, 50, fig. 2.7.53 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2003b, map 1. In the “Wangzhi” chapter of the

Liji the directions for royal inspection tours were east, south, west, and then north (Liji Zhengzhu 4.5a-6a).

54 Allan 1991, 66. For a discussion of Allan’s interpretation of ya, see Hwang 1996, 119-42.

introduction 15

(Shangdi), beliefs regarding his exact path and how long it would take him to get there remain unclear to us. There is no hint in Shao Tuo’s tomb as to the direction of his ultimate goal, the south or the northwest, a liminal direction linked with death in the ritual texts (see the discussion of this, below, and in Chapter Two). If we presume that he moved to the north, to his personal possessions, after feasting in the east—a mortuary feast, described as xiang in Western Zhou inscriptions,55 and that he did not return to the center, then in that case south, the compartment stocked with chariot pieces and weaponry, would seem to be the direction of his exit from the tomb. Unfortunately, this is difficult to confirm. First, there is nothing in the outer coffin décor or architecture that reflects a gate or exit from the tomb as a whole, and, secondly, not all tombs with similar tomb texts and presumably similar customs packed the chariot and weapons in the southern chamber.

A tomb in Xincai in eastern Henan, for example, was designed in the Four Regions model, the Ya-shape (yaxing ), typical of the Shang, for whom the center was clearly the point of communication with Heaven, and the chariots, horses, and weapons were placed in the western com-partment. The western chamber of the Baoshan tomb is the thinnest, suggesting the shortest period of occupancy and hence a possible de-parture point. The Ya-shape, on the other hand, emphasizes the center. It is perhaps significant that even during the Han period, when the ritual text Liji was compiled, a room used by the sons of the deceased during mourning was called a “white room” e shi . The word e (understoodas a variant of e “disgust”) is written with the phonetic element ya (over the semantic tu “earth”), which might represent both the sound of the word as well as an implied link to the tomb. Through successive rituals of mourning involving communication with the dead, the boys were gradually purified and allowed to participate in regular life.56 This basic cross décor for tombs and sacred buildings, such as the mingtang

( “The Hall of Light,” the stylized Han version of the cruciform, but one linked to correlative natural philosophy rather than to pure ances-tral worship), seems to have had something to do with the metaphorical vehicle for transcendence of the spirit. If the tumulus of the tomb was considered an omphalos itself, as Allan claims, then it would make sense that the spirits would emerge out of the center.

55 Cook 1997 and 2005b.56 Liji Zhengzhu, “Sang daji” , 13.21a. The room is understood as an unplas-

tered room isolated from the rest of the family.

chapter one16

In the Shanhaijing model, surrounding the center were mountains, seas, and finally the Great Wilderness (dahuang ), all inhabited by strange beings and spirits.57 As Shao Tuo’s spirit moved through the layers of earthbound spirits up towards the world of ancestral and cosmic spirits, his documents would serve as both identification and tallies, or passes through the Gates of Heaven, much in the same way that later Daoist adepts might have imagined using sacred diagrams or charms (fu ) com-posed of strange script to enter into paradise through mountains. These documents would also serve, much the same as early bronze inscriptions, as records of the merit he gained as a political officer and the sacrifices and prayers performed to the large pantheon of spirits—the latter per-haps representing unpaid debts on the part of the spirits, due to the fact that they received sacrifice without curing Shao Tuo’s illness.

Elaborate tombs dating back to the Shang period attest to the antiq-uity of the Chinese belief in the afterlife. Divination and sacrifice records equally as old, along with numerous more recent tales of ghosts and spir-its, prove a tradition of belief in supernatural influence over the living. Less certain is the antiquity of the belief in travel beyond the tomb. Re-cently, scholars have debated whether the spirit or soul of the deceased was thought to travel beyond the tomb. Some suggest that, since the world outside the tomb was pictured as dangerous, the tomb was created to act as a “happy home” and a “paradise,” essentially a safehouse for the wandering soul of the deceased out of which he would not escape (to potentially harm the living).58 Others point to classical references of the coffin built to resemble a house or a carriage, and the tomb as a home in the form of a cosmogram.59

This book suggests that the generations of Chinese poets and schol-ars fascinated by Chu songs of wandering spirits (collected by Han em-perors)60 were not in fact fooled by the Han fascination with Yin and Yang, the dark and light forces of nature, into believing that the soul

57 Ibid., 45, fig. 2.4.58 Wu 1992. This point was emphasized by Edward Davis in his discussion at the

panel titled “New Insights from Old Tombs,” Association of Asian Studies, Annual Conference, San Diego, 2004. I would note that although I am assuming that the spirits flew out of the tomb and up into the air, it is not impossible to imagine that perhaps they were conceived of as traveling for a while underground as well.

59 Lai 2003, 41-51, 73.60 Schneider 1980; see Sukhu 1999 for the fascination with the Chuci as a record

of Chu spirituality; for studies of related Qin and later evidence, see Loewe 1979, Loewe 1982, Yü 1964-65, Yü 1981, Yü 1987, and Yates 1997.

introduction 17

was divided into the floating and the corporeal. This book firmly sup-ports the idea of the detachment of an ethereal self from the corpo-real as an ancient and enduring Chinese belief. The notion of the soul leaving the body during sleep, illness, or death can also be linked to the astral travels of later Daoist adepts.61 I argue that Shao Tuo’s tomb was equipped for the floating or ethereal soul’s journey through the danger-ous wilds—land beyond the walls of civilization—and into the world of the spirits. I agree with Lai Guolong that perhaps, as Kenneth Brashier has argued, the precise naming of a dualistic spirit—the Yin spirit of the dead (the corporeal or earthly po ) and the Yang spirit (the cloudy or ethereal hun )62—may have been a Han phenomenon. The Baoshan tomb shows preparations for spirit travel beyond the tomb, into the wild and liminal landscapes that bordered the cultivated fields outside of city walls, and, eventually, the deceased ascended into the astral planes as a divine spirit (shen ).63 My analysis of the contents of the tomb and of the divination manuscript shows the attention that fourth-century BCE ritualists paid to the forces of Yin and Yang. It also reveals a level of awareness among the diviners different from that of the tomb designers, specifically in relation to the cosmological scheme of the Five Phases as evolving from the earlier Four Regions, an evolution described by Aihe Wang as reflecting the change in political models of authority.64 I also show how the Baoshan material—in the context of other contemporary tombs in the Jiangling, Hubei, area—helps to date the evolution from one scheme to another. It is the author’s hope that scholars will use the conclusions of this book to project backwards in time to earlier tombs and their symbolisms.

In Chapter Two, I briefly examine transmitted documentation for mortuary rituals considered the standard for ancient China. I look at the traditional rituals associated with death and dying and the notion of journeying in the afterlife. In Chapter Three, I focus on the burial ritual and the symbolism of the contents of Shao Tuo’s tomb, compartment by compartment from the viewpoint that these are items his spirit would use in its flight. In this section, I discuss inner and outer in terms of the creation of a purified space, as well as the protective rituals used to

61 See Brashier 1996 for the distinction between soul and spirit, and Schafer 1977 and Major 1999 for the connection with later Daoism.

62 Harper 1998, 122, notes the importance of the harmonious fusion of Yin and Yang to human life, and the relative insignificance of these two “souls.”

63 Harper 1998, 185; Brashier 1996, 125-58.64 A. Wang 2000, 75-128.

chapter one18

maintain a sanctified center, out of which the spirit could transform or communicate with Heaven. Chapter Four returns to the issue of Shao Tuo’s death and the three-year record of divination events and sacrifices made to stop the process of his dying. Here I analyze the belief system evident from this text and similar contemporary divination texts. I focus on an unusual painting found on a lacquer box in his personal compart-ment that I read as a metaphor for Shao Tuo’s departure. Chapter Five discusses briefly the supernatural landscape through which Shao Tuo’s spirit would journey. Here I also discuss the meaning and function of the tomb guardian figure found in many Jiangling tombs and its role in the spirit’s journey. In the Epilogue, I take up the symbolism of tomb architecture and compare the Baoshan tomb with contemporary Chu tombs in the same and other regions as well as with earlier, Zhou, tombs. Finally, I suggest that these manuscripts can provide a better picture of religious practice during the fourth century BCE in the Chu state. They reveal a multidimensional and complex belief system and show that the people of the Yangzi River valley did not belong to a fringe culture but were indeed active members of a vibrant larger Warring States-period culture based firmly within the evolving current of what we understand as Chinese civilization.

My primary source for details about the Baoshan tomb complex is the two-volume set, Baoshan Chumu , written by the Hubei Provin-cial Jing-Sha Railroad Archaeological Team and published by Wenwu in 1991 (referred to as “Hubei” in the notes).

CHAPTER TWO

DEATH AS JOURNEY IN ANCIENT CHINA

I yoked a team of jade dragons to a phoenix-figured car

And waited for the wind to come, to soar up on my journey.

“Li Sao,” D. Hawkes, trans.1

China’s earliest dictionary (c. 100 CE), Xu Shen’s Shuowen , explains death with a pun: the word “die” (si ) meant si “exhaust, run out (of life force),” “what is left behind by humans” (ren suo li ye ).2 A roughly contemporary Daoist definition for life and death explained that being human was the gathering together of life force (sheng qi

). Death was the dispersal (san ) of this energy.3 For the much ear-lier Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi, death viewed within the continuum of gathering and dispersed energy was simply one point of transition, of metamorphosis.4 For others, the moment of death represented a “cut-ting off ” (zhe ) of being human and the beginning of being a ghost (gui

).5 To define “ghost,” Xu Shen once again resorted to a pun: a gui

1 Lines 183-84, in Hawkes 1985, 73. The word li had many meanings; see Wang Li 2000, 1611-12, and n. 41, below.

2 Ding Wen shuju 1977, vol. 4, 628-29. See also Ikeda Suetoshi’s review of later commentaries (Ikeda 1981). He understands the original graph to represent the bones of an exposed corpse bent in a kneeling position (682-95). From excavated burials, we know that such a position is not common for the tomb “host” (except among the early Qin people in the northwest) but would represent the interred live sacrificial human. Ames 1998, 62-63, translates si “to drain dry” and compares it to wang “to flee, escape, perish” which was understood by the commentator Duan Yucai as “entering into a remote and concealed place.”

3 Zhuangzi, chap. 22 (“Zhi bei you” ), Zhuangzi jishi, 320, see Graham 1981, 160; for the date of the chapter as early Han, see Loewe 1993, 57. The word qi has many translations, e.g., breath, life force, vapor, and pneumatic energy.

4 Graham 1981, 23-24.5 Liji, “Jifa” ; see Liji Zhengzhu 14.2a. Chao 2001, 341-43, points out that gui

as spirit, guishen, is not really evident in Chinese sources until the Chunqiu period (as recorded in Zuozhuan), when it could refer to either human or nature spirits. He sus-pects that the graph for gui originally depicted a shaman wearing a mask during rituals in the ancestral temple. Childs-Johnson 1995 also explores this idea.

chapter two20

is what a human “returns to” (ren suo gui wei gui ). “To return (home)” (gui ), according to the Liji , a Han compendium of ear-lier rituals,6 many of which seem to date to at least the Warring States period, was “to return to the earth” (guitu ). Only when a body has been returned to its home, the earth, could proper sacrifices—the mor-tuary feasts and tasting food rituals (xiangchang )—take place in the main shrine (miao ) or at the sacred plot in the wilderness, the burial site (zhao ).7 Those without a proper burial could not receive sacrifices from their descendants, essential to nurturing them through transition and at critical junctures of their spirit journey. They had not “returned home” and thus roamed the earth causing illness and calamity. People who traveled outside of areas cleaned through exorcist rituals risked running into these ill-omened spirits and becoming sick or even dying.8

Traditionally, the dispersal of energy after death was also seen as the division of the forces of Yin and Yang, the po Yin energy that attached itself to “home” (the tomb) and the hun Yang energy that journeyed into the world of spirits. Kenneth Brashier has reviewed doubts by modern scholars as to how pervasive the notion of a divided hun and po soul was in pre-Han China. He concludes that for many people, particularly by late in the Han, the composite term hunpo represented a single entity representing the vital energy stored in the organs of the body. How-ever, he notes that Han-period burials seem to have assumed that part of a person’s energy was stored in the tomb and part floated above it or away. While the hunpo or “consciousness” might be worshipped at the gravesite, the shen “social identity” or “named spirit” was worshipped in the ancestral temple.9

According to the Warring States-period anthology of Chunqiu-pe-riod tales, the Zuozhuan, a person consisted of two types of energy (qi): the Yin energy developed in a person upon birth and the Yang energy formed only after the Yin matured.10 Whether or not this reference is a Han interpolation during the transmission of an earlier text is difficult to

6 Loewe 1993, 293-97.7 Liji, “Jiyi” , see Liji Zhengzhu 14.2a-3a, which explains that represents both

the place of sacrifice (zhao ) and the type of sacrifice (tiao ); see below, the notes to the translation of the Baoshan Tomb Inventory Text, app. 2, strip 265.

8 The 3d-c. BCE Shuihudi texts marked days when it would be dangerous to travel. See Yate’s discussion and translations (1997, 513-26). For a description of Han ritual activities at the graveside during the period of transition, see Brashier 1996, 152-56.

9 Brashier 1996, 127, 156-57.10 Zuozhuan, Zhao 7; in Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 365, vi.

death as journey 21

determine. According to Donald Harper’s research into Warring States beliefs, the Yin and Yang qi were, by the fourth century BCE, probably active as medical terms that described the condition of the body and also could be applied to cosmological schemes, but the exact concept of a dual soul is not clear. Instead, human life was understood as composed of qi and blood. Drawing from references in the Zuozhuan and the late Warring states text of Zhuangzi, he notes that Yin and Yang were under-stood as the two most influential of many vapors.11 By the third century BCE, Yin and Yang were active cosmological concepts, as documented in one recently discovered Guodian bamboo text fragment, the “Taiyi sheng shui” . In this text the four seasons were understood as products of Yin and Yang, themselves products of “spirit” (shen ) and “illumination” (ming ),12 the products of Heaven and Earth.13

These vapors or energies might be understood as the natural forces called “essence” (jing ) or “spirit” (shen), which activated the human form (xing ). As Harper has explained, life was envisioned during the late Warring States period as a kind of “spirit illumination” (shenming

) that “penetrated” (tong ) the body.14 When one’s life qi was at its most vigorous (yang), the elite descendant would draw down a power (de ) from Heaven, through the ancient kings and his ancestors. This ancient process is evident in the Western Zhou sacrificial bronze inscriptions.15 Sarah Allan explains that the accumulated essence that makes up life in its most crude form, was perceived as originating from water and from Tai Yi, The Great One. According to the late Warring States Zhuangzi chapter “Tianxia,” this crude essence could be nurtured through the art of the Dao to become “the numinous and luminous” (Allan’s translation of shenming), a concept echoed in the Guodian “Tai Yi sheng shui” text.16 Relevant to our study of death is the notion that at this time the spirit (shen) was linked to “earth,” which was seen as derived from “water,” and

11 Harper 1999, 861-63.12 Maspero 1933 explained the connection between the word ming, death, and spir-

its. Legge understood shenming as a “spiritual intelligence” (Legge 1967, 173).13 See Allan’s translation, 2003, 261, and Szabó’s discussion 2003, 266-67. The

original text is found in Jingmenshi bowuguan 1998, 11-14, 123-26.14 Harper 1998, 119-22; see also the full exploration of the term shenming by Szabó

2003, esp. its relation to qi (261). The term shenming seems to function like the terms hunpo and guishen, i.e., as both compounds and separate aspects of a single concept.

15 Suggested by Harper 1998, 119, and fully explored in Cook 2005b. The concept of yang is not mentioned in the Western Zhou bronze inscriptions.

16 Allan 2003, 243-45. Both Allan and Szabó translate the term as two separate components, shen and ming.

chapter two22

that the same word for water returning to its source (gui) was used to refer to a person returning to the earth.17 The flow (xing ) of qi (a watery es-sence) above ground was like that of water on or below the ground—and both represented the natural flow of the cosmos or Dao.18

The term ming (brightness, illuminated, numinous, transcendent) had since the Western Zhou period been linked with the quality of spiritual essence or life force (de ). The term mingde as a personal quality at-tained through imitation (xing “taking on the mold” ) of one’s ances-tors continued to be used in bronze-inscribed “records of merit” during the Spring and Autumn period.19 In inscriptions from the south, annual sacrifices (si ) were described as ming and de, as something “corrected” (zheng ), or as “extended into eternity” (yanyong ). The illuminated de received during the sacrifice was via the heart (xin ) during the per-formance of “awesome decorum” weiyi (a musical performance of dance and song).20 Harper suggests that the Warring States term shenming represents a state of transcendent personal power and ability through empathetic magic to communicate with “essences” and “spirits” outside of the body as well.21 Presumably, when this vital radiance wavered or escaped the body for any reason, yin or destructive essences and spirits could intrude into the body causing illness and ultimately death. Han texts referred to death as the “release from form” (jiexing ), a term which Harper links to the Daoist self-cultivation practice of “release from the corpse” (jieshi ).22 The escaped shen carried with it the person’s iden-tity, an identity that was worshipped in the shrine and that could continue to influence its descendants.

In the recently excavated third-century BCE Confucian bamboo texts originating from the Jiangling region, one titled “Xing zi ming chu” (

) from a tomb in Guodian and one related text titled “Xing qing lun” ( ) from a Shanghai Museum collection of contemporary manuscripts,23 we see expressed the idea that the development of “human

17 Allan 1997, 43-44, 71.18 Allan 1997, 66-70.19 Cook 1990, 218-19, 226, 237; Maspero 1933. The Shang people used ming to

specify early morning. Since the Shang linked their ancestor cults to “suns” or days, the rise of each day was likely a ritually potent time (see Allan 1990, 19-56; Keight-ley 2000, 17-36).

20 Cook 1990, 241-47; Cook 1995b.21 Harper 1998, 120.22 Harper 1998, 124.23 Jingmenshi bowuguan 1998, 59-66, 177-84; Ma Chengyuan 2001, vol. 1, 69-

115, 215-77.

death as journey 23

nature” (xing ) relies on the “life span” (ming ) determined by Heaven (tian ). “Human nature” was an “inner” (nei ) aspect of being alive, whereas the expression of emotion (qing ) was an “outer” (wai ) aspect. It was this emotion that could be moved through music (yue ) and channeled (like water or qi) through the movement or “performance” (xing ) of ritual (li ), a process that represented the Confucian or Ruist “humanistic way” (rendao ). Promoters of the Ruist method of self-cultivation argued against the “Heavenly way” (tiandao ) promoted by believers in fate (the Mohists) or in natural systems (Daoists).24

In a Guodian text concerning “The Five Phases” (wuxing ) we see both “ways” co-opted into what was essentially a Ruist practice of self-deification.25 In this text, the energies are not referred to as qi but by the older term of de, a word commonly translated for Warring States texts as “virtue” in the (inner) moral sense, but, in fact, derived from the Western Zhou concept of power handed down by Heaven, through the Zhou kings, to members of lineages who had accumulated merit over many generations through service (outer behavior) to the Zhou king.26 This Guodian text, which might be classified as promoting the superi-ority of a Ruist style of tiandao over a Mohist or Daoist idea of natu-ral systems, explains the difference between the Human and Heavenly dao: all “virtues” (“humaneness” ren , “proper decorum” yi , “ritual practice” li , “knowledge” zhi , “sageliness” sheng ) were processes (xing) that could be categorized as de only if internalized (“modeled” or “given form” on the inside, xing yu nei / ), but just “processes” or (outer) “behavior” (xing) if not. A person had de only if he was able to harmonize all five, but was simply “skilled” or “good” (shan ) if possessing just four (i.e., all but sheng). “Skill” was rendao, whereas “vir-tue” was tiandao. If the form of humaneness was internal (i.e., inside the “heart” xin , where it could be processed as “thought” si or “inten-tion” zhi ), it was called the process of de, if it was not formed inside, it was called “process,” “movement,” or “behavior” (xing).27 The text goes on to explain the importance first of mastering bell chimes then stone chimes in the cultivation and performance of these “virtues”—a

24 For a general discussion of the Daoist and the Confucian “way(s)” and their relationship to the spirit, qi, and notions of Yin and Yang, see Allan 1997; also Nivi-son 1999 for a general introduction.

25 For a historical study of this process, see Puett 2002.26 See Cook 1997 and 2005b.27 Jingmenshi bowuguan 1998, 29-35, 149-54. See the discussion in Ikeda 2000,

232-33. On the politics of “sageliness,” see Puett 2002, 96-144.

chapter two24

performative practice that like the text itself suggests extends all the way back in time to the Western Zhou.28 In Robin Yate’s analysis of the Ruist philosopher Xunzi’s writings about music, we see that sound (yin ) was believed to act like vapor in the sense that it could penetrate into the heart and influence the emotions (qing) and ultimately human nature (xing).29 The inner energy or de according to the Guodian text was controlled by man, even if it ultimately connected to Heaven.

By contrast, in a Daoist text, such as the Daodejing also found at Guodian, or the Zhuangzi , a Heavenly dao—one without ances-tral powers to intercede on behalf of descendants—would manifest it-self as qi in all things (wu ) as part of the natural flow of energy; life, dying, and death were all parts of a metaphoric process—a belief in natural forces or vapors that had much more in common with the Han-period’s Five Phases scheme than the traditional Four Regions cosmology nominally maintained by the early Ruists (who imagined themselves as the keepers of Zhou cultural knowledge).30 Contrary to the Ruists, who were concerned with preserving ritual practices to cultivate their de and enact good government, the Mohists ironically preserved the older (or perhaps simply more common and non-elite) notion of baleful guishen who must receive sacrifices for the health and welfare of a state and its people. They cleverly used the rhetorical models of the Ruists, the Sage Kings, to explain:

In antiquity, the Sage Kings knew what the Heavenly Ghosts desired and thus escaped their disgust and sought out what was good for the world. They guided the world’s people to practice purification and abstinence, washing their faces and hands and bathing, keeping clean to present the alcohol and grain offerings in sacrifices to the Heavenly Ghosts (tiangui). They did not dare to present unclean sacrificial offerings to the spirits (guishen) or fail to present fat sacrificial animals and good quality jade staffs and discs, nor to be untimely in their spring and autumn sacrificial rituals, unjust in hearing court cases, unfair in the division of goods, or slovenly in their residences.31

28 I trace the evolution of this practice in Cook 2005b.29 Yates 1997, 502.30 See Gong’s essay on this process in the Confucian Guodian texts (Gong 2000)

and Roger Ames’s discussion of life and death as interdependent correlative catego-ries in classical Daoism (Ames 1998).

31 Mozi jiangu, “Shangtong, zhong” , , in Sun Yirang 1991, 50. My reading follows that of Chao 2001, 343-45, which gives examples of this ideology as echoed in the Zuozhuan.

death as journey 25

The mixed texts and ideologies found in tombs in Jiangling tell us that the educated elite of Chu were familiar with the debates circulating in other local courts at the time and likely followed a variety of prac-tices even within their own elite circles. But when it came to illness, their concerns echoed those of the Mohists. As Donald Harper notes, the Baoshan divination text employed a remarkably antiquated notion of physical well-being, one in which the ancestral spirits along with an array of nature spirits, rather than cosmic vapors or natural processes, were seen as both the causes and the cures for illness.32 The text record-ing the divinations and sacrifices made to save Shao Tuo’s life includes no philosophizing on the process of living, spiritual cultivation, or how to become a sage. The ritualists were concerned with plugging the gaps in Shao Tuo’s performed rituals and purifying his inner being so that his own vital breath or vapor circulated normally and did not “rise” (shang

), a condition that in the Han-period ritual text Zhouli was associ-ated with coughing and the winter season.33 This condition is explained by Harper as a reversal of the proper movement of vapor in the vessels, which should ideally move downward like a root into the earth before extending upward to heaven.34

The rise of one’s vital energy to Heaven instead of down to Earth represented a fundamental upsetting of what makes someone a human. It was also the first step toward becoming a shen if the release was con-trolled or self-willed, a process described in the chapter “Neiye” (or “In-ner Training”) of the Guanzi .35 The intrusion of too much earthly essence, or yin-essence that had congealed into gui “a ghost,” would up-set the qi and cause madness, bad dreams, and illness.36 During the late Warring States period, elite men were trained in the dance and song per-formance of weiyi to nurture their vital de, probably by roaming Ruist specialists, but if they became sick they were treated by teams of diviners and shamans or spirit technicians (wu ).37

32 Harper 1999, 854.33 See the section on the jiyi doctors, in Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 3, j. 9, 36-43. For

the history of the text, see Loewe 1993, 24-32. See also Harper 1998, 148-83, for an account of the occult tradition and magical recipes.

34 Harper 1998, 81, 125-26, 211, no. 1. In Han medical texts, this condition was cured through cauterization of the “Minor Yin vessel,” one of the “vessels of death” (79).

35 Graham 1989, 100-05; Harper 1998, 119-25; Puett 2002, 109-17.36 Brashier 1996, 142-45, notes that if hunpo took flight a person became confused

but did not necessarily die, at least not immediately.37 On these medical and spirit technicians, see the discussions by Zhang Jun 1994,

418-77; Falkenhausen 1995; and Harper 1995, 817.

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By the end of the Warring States period, the collapsing Chu polity, which by then stretched over the entire Yangzi River valley east to the ocean (incorporating numerous local cultures, including peoples distin-guished as Ba , Wu , and Yue ), was known as a hotbed of witch-craft. Zhang Jun, in his study of the phenomenon, suggests that the shaman-filled landscape was in fact the remnants of a common culture spread throughout pre-Qin China, but that it was Chu that in accounts of local culture from Han times forward became an icon for supersti-tious beliefs and wu practices.38 The Song-period Yueyang fengtu ji

, for example, notes the local tendency of the Jing Hu people (modern Hunan) to use shamans and divination to seek the source of a curse, rather than herbs or medicine—a custom attributed to ancient Chu culture.39

Shao Tuo’s body was cursed by malignant forces and dissatisfied spirits (such as “numinous ancestors” mingzu ) that blocked the downward circulation of his qi from his heart, causing coughing and fever. The ritual practitioners, who tried to identify the malignant force through divina-tion, as well as bribe it through sacrifices and expel it through exorcism, also tried to control the escape of qi through medical and magical meth-ods.40 It is likely that one method of the wu involved controlled spirit travel or other ecstatic methods—dancing, drumming—to call back his escaping spirit as death approached. The notion of spirit flight, either by a shaman or by one who experienced physical death, is best described in a late Warring States song attributed to a Chu official contemporary with Shao Tuo—Qu Yuan .

This particular song was the “Li Sao” (commonly translated as “Encountering Sorrow”—but perhaps, given the contents, more accu-rately understood as “Departing Sorrow ”).41 It gives details of the de-parture of a powerful spirit from the capricious human world and his journey to the spirit world (via a chariot pulled by dragons to visit the supernatural beings of the Four Regions, but finally entering Heaven through the Kunlun Mountains in the west). Unlike Shao Tuo, Qu Yuan

38 Zhang Jun 1994, 418-19; see also Harper 1998, 43.39 Zhang Jun 1994, 422-24. The Yueyang fengtuji (SKQS edn.) was compiled by Fan

Zhiming (jinshi degree 1100).40 For a discussion of methods, see Harper 1998, 148-83; Lo 2002a and 2002b.41 Glosses of li as zao “encounter” versus bie “separate from” date to the Han

period. Wang Yi (2d c. CE) understood the title Lisao jing as “the path for departing sorrow” (reading jing as ); see You Guo’en 1982, 3-4.

death as journey 27

did not die slowly of illness but took his own life—a much more power-ful and aggressive step into the otherworld, as he could now return as a vengeful ghost. After being exiled by King Huai to the Changsha region, south of the Yangzi River, Qu drowned himself in the Miluo River

, thus making it impossible to bury his body (and hence better to negotiate with his spirit). We know from the efforts of Shao Tuo’s divin-ers preserved in the divination text placed in his tomb that the curses of drowned people were potent and malignant forces. The spirit flights de-tailed in the Warring States-period (475-221 BCE) songs associated with Qu Yuan and other songs collected in Chuci (“the elegies of Chu,” or The Songs of the South) during the Han period describe journeys across water in boats and over mountains and rivers in winged chariots, journeys that led to Heaven or to the land of the Immortals. The Mu tianzi zhuan

preserves a contemporary idea about a similar journey to the land of the Immortals on Kunlun Mountain taken by the tenth century BCE Zhou King Mu.42 Both journeys involve the transition from earthly social disorder to heavenly order after traversing a landscape filled with numerous spirits and famous figures from the past, the likes of whom Shao Tuo may have also expected to meet after his death, as indicated by the number of sacrifices to them during his illness.

The metamorphosis that resulted in the separation of qi from the body or from death was a process that began with Shao Tuo’s illness.43 Shao Tuo’s dying was chronicled by diviners in the Baoshan divination text (translated in Appendix One). His breath had become shallow and his appetite diminished. Eventually, he could no longer stand. His chest and abdomen, site of the five repositories of vital energies (the viscera), were increasingly in pain and he coughed up his vital breath.44 During this pro-cess, ritualists divined and sacrificed to an array of ancestral, stellar, and earth deities and performed exorcistic rituals against numerous unhappy ghosts, hoping to lift the curses and obstructions that would cause Tuo, as they referred to him, not to live out his natural life span (ming ).

42 For a description of the text and a discussion of its date, see Loewe 1993, 342-46. For a discussion of the symbolism in the text and the idea that this spiritual jour-ney of transcendence was created to overcome the inauspicious drowning of King Mu’s father in the Han River during an attack on Chu, see Porter 1996.

43 For illness as one stage in a process of metamorphosis in classical Daoism, see Ames 1998, 65-66.

44 See below, app. 1. A medical doctor, Claire Hicks, suggested to me, after I described Shao Tuo’s symptoms, that he may have suffered from something along the lines of me-tastasized kidney cancer, as an infectious disease would have killed him much faster.

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When a person was about to die or had just breathed his last, attempts were made to resuscitate him (fu ).45 The ritual was also called zhaohun

(“Summoning the Hun-vital Energy”), which is the same name as a song collected in the Chuci. While accounts of the performance of zhaohun for ordinary elite men in the ritual texts seem to be limited to calling the deceased’s name (see below), the song “Zhaohun,” by con-trast, is a lengthy song of persuasion or enticement of the escaped qi or “ethereal soul” to return to the world of the living from the wilderness of the Four Regions. It describes both the efforts to call the soul back but also the process of sending the spirit off. According to the received text of the Chuci “Zhaohun,” the singers tried first to frighten the hun or “spirit” back into the body (not only to bring the patient back to life but also so that, after burial, the spirit could begin its journey properly equipped and from a sanctified space). The singers sang of the dangers along the paths in any of the four geographical directions, up in Heaven, or below in the Land of Darkness. By way of contrast, they described the luxuries possible at home, a palace replete with everything the body might want: jeweled furniture, lovely women, and succulent foods. Finally, if life could not be restored, a farewell party was held. As we know from the feasts described in the earlier Book of Songs (Shijing) and in inscriptions on sacrificial bronze vessels,46 these feasts were meant to fill the senses and satiate the appetites of both the living and the dead. Guests played drinking games while surrounded by dancing, singing, and orchestral music. In the song “Zhaohun,” the guests, drunk with sensual pleasures and wine, “gave delight to the dear departed.” After the party, the scene shifted abruptly from images of domestic pleasures to the stark scene of a lone hunter, referred to as a king hunting in the marshland.47 The song closed with an admonition, perhaps by the driver48 of the hunter’s chariot, that the king leave before “darkness yields to daylight.” The fi-nal scene was from far above the earth, a thousand li above the rivers and woods.49 The transition from the scene of a raucous banquet inside the palace to a solitary hunt at night in the wilds can easily be read as a

45 See Brashier 1996, 138-46, for discussion of attempts to rectify the escaped hun and po.

46 Cook 1993 and 1997.47 In the Yili funeral record, the last set of items placed in the tomb consisted of

hunting equipment (“Jixi, ji” , Yili Zhengzhu 13.31b-32b).48 The driver might, in some sense, represent the persona of the ritualist or poet.49 Hawkes 1985, 223-30.

death as journey 29

metaphor for the journey of the spirit from the tomb, or “home” through the supernatural wilds to Heaven.

In the Liji, the transformation of vital breath into a spirit was ex-plained as follows: “Mountains, forests, rivers, valleys, hills, and mounds that could emit clouds, make wind and rain, or cause strange phenom-ena to appear—all were called spirits (shen).” 50 When Confucius’ disciple asks what is meant by the term guishen, the master replied: “It is vital breath (qi), which is most manifest as a spirit (shen). As for the po ( , a kind of qi linked to the body at birth),51 it is most manifest as a ghost (gui). The unity of the gui and shen is the epitome of (my) teachings. All that is alive must die, and all that dies must return to earth: this is what is referred to as a ghost. When the bones and flesh are down below in the earthen chamber (yin > ) made (for them) in the wild lands (yetu

) and their vital breath (qi) rises up above it, as a shining glow (zhao-ming ) smoking upward sorrowfully. This is the essence of all things, the multitude of spirits (shen).” 52 Spirits, the gui and the shen, represented the movement of qi, downwards into the earth or upwards into the sky. The fact that the link between qi and Shao Tuo’s body was unstable dur-ing his illness shows that his hunpo was already in the process of leaving or, indeed, had already left.53 In a sense, then, the return of Shao Tuo’s body to earth was a ritual process that began before his last breath and physical death.

The care of Shao Tuo’s qi after it passed from his body, and ultimately his gui and shen, is reflected in the mortuary rituals recorded in ancient texts. Scholars have reconstructed Warring States and early Han funeral ritual from passages in the roughly Warring States to Han-period ritual texts Yili , Liji , and Zhouli .54 While it is unlikely that the

50 Liji Zhengzhu sect, 23, “Jifa” , 14.1b.51 By the late Warring States period, po is understood as corporeal qi that appears

at birth but after death goes down to the earth; ethereal qi, the hun , was connect-ed to Yang and to Heaven. Evidence for this notion is found in the Zuozhuan, Zhao Gong 7, and the Liji, “ Jiaotesheng” ([Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 11, 8.11b], which Chao 2001, 348, accepts as reflecting Chunqiu-period practice).

52 Liji Zhengzhu, “Jiyi” , sect. 24, 14.10a-b.53 See n. 43, above.54 Qian Xuan 1996, 597-616, discusses the value of these sources, which he accepts

as the standard for all of early China. He usefully combs through the relevant chap-ters, combines them with relevant quotes in pre-Qin transmitted texts, and provides a comprehensive narrative of what was done when a man of rank (a shi ) died. The most comprehensive description of funerary ritual comes from Yili chapters “Sangfu”

, “Shi sangli” , “Jixi li” , and “Shi yu li” (Yili Zhengzhu, j. 11-14, or Yili zhushu, j. 28-43, 152-234, in Shisanjing zhushu, vol. 1, 1096-178). Lai 2002,

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idealized ritual procedures for palliative care, funerals, and burials as de-scribed in these texts were exactly the same as those for Shao Tuo, it is likely that basic beliefs concerning the body, the spirit, and the journey to Heaven were quite ancient and shared by those elite who participated to a vast degree in a shared religious culture with roots deep in Shang culture.55 Of particular interest to this study are aspects of the mortuary rituals which provide some insight into the symbolic role of the layout and contents of his tomb and into the perceived movements of any re-maining qi: perhaps it was the po or bodily qi destined to remain in the earth, or an ethereal qi/hun—or just some aspect of the deceased’s iden-tity that was perceived to travel to Heaven—that moved about chambers inside the tomb after burial.

We know that the Han inherited many features that we identify with the earlier Chu culture56 and that during the Han period the standard care for a dying person involved the creation of a special environment in which death would occur while the body was properly aligned within the cosmos and separated into a purified yin space.57 First they moved the seriously ill to the primary wife’s private chamber (a room, shi ) in the back of the house behind the main hall (tang ) of the house where one usually greeted guests or held ceremonies.58 There the patient was

208-30, discusses the formation of these chapters of the Yili text and suggests that, given some of the correlations archaeologists have found with Chu tombs, they were formed between the mid-5th and 4th c. BCE. The Liji chapters “Sang daji” and “Sangfu daji” (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 22, j. 13; Liji zhengyi, j. 44-45, 343-58, in Shisanjing zhushu, vol. 2, 1571-86) give details that slightly vary from the Yili accounts. The funerary ritual recorded in these chapters has been summarized along with rel-evant quotes from contemporary texts by Li Yujie 1991, 97-137; Wu 1992, 112-21; Zhou 1992, 199-214; Qian Xuan 1996, 597-616; and Lai 2002, 208-30.

55 Chinese-language studies of Shang and Zhou beliefs and rituals are too numer-ous to list here. Li Yujie 1991 focuses on mortuary ritual, using both archaeological data and transmitted sources. Chao 2001, 150-62, also discusses continuities and dif-ferences in the mortuary ritual over time but relies primarily on transmitted textual sources.

56 See Major 1999, 167-69. For a description of mortuary rituals in the Han using both the ritual texts and evidence from Han tombs, see Loewe 1982 and 2005.

57 Shao Tuo died at home. As to what was done when an elite man (shi ) died away from home, see “Zaji, xia” in Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 21, 12.13b.

58 For a reconstruction of the early house plan based on the Yili, see Chao 2001, 168. It consisted of a rectangular walled compound with a main gate on the south wall, and a raised area inside the northern end that was roofed. Small roofed rooms, called shu , were also built both inside and outside of the left and right sides of the gate in the south. The raised area was divided into tang and shi, perhaps distinguishing the levels to which guest might penetrate the house. The tang, to the south, consisted of a large central room accessible by two sets of stairs from a large courtyard. These

death as journey 31

placed by the northern wall with his head facing east, the same direction by which the Chu buried their dead.59 North was the most yin direction, a quality shared with the woman who regularly occupied the chamber. Attendants swept and cleaned both inside and outside the house be-fore visitors came to visit the patient. They then removed any musical instruments used while entertaining the visitors, as the patient “desired quiet.” 60 In some cases, the visitors may have held hands with the patient through a window, perhaps a northern window in the east wall or through a special window called a you in the wall that separated the back room from the main hall.61 When the illness became critical, they laid the pa-tient on the ground as a symbol of returning to the earth. Attendants in charge of “classes of material objects used to distinguish rank (pin

)” changed the patient into court attire and, as death drew near, they placed cotton gauze over his mouth and nostrils to determine when he had stopped breathing.62 The sons prayed (dao )63 and performed the

stairs are marked as the western and eastern stairs. Two smaller enclosed tang were located to the east and west of the main tang. The shi area consisted of a central shi and two side fang accessible by narrow halls behind the eastern and western tang. The eastern fang had a tiny, more public, space called the “northern tang” that faced a small door in the northeastern corner of the complex. This plan is not too far distant from the 9th-c. BCE Western Zhou building discovered in Fengchu , Shaanxi (see Rawson 1999a, 391-92), but it has little in common with the clay models excavated from Han-period tombs, which seem to be concerned with multiple-sto-ried houses only some of which are walled. These examples do tend to have the liv-ing quarters opposite the main gate with a courtyard in between; see thirteen house variations just found in Henan region tombs, depicted in Zhang Jianmin 2005.

59 See “Sang daji,” in Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 22, 13.1a-2b, and “Jixi, ji” , , in Yili Zhengzhu 13.19a-b.

60 Music was an expression of joy and thus inappropriate for the dying (one does not listen to music on the anniversary of a parent’s death [“Tangong, shang” , in Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 3, 2.3b]), or sing near where mortuary rituals are taking place, “Tan-gong, shang” 2.4a). Music had the power to conduct qi through the emotions (qing) and was likely viewed as a powerful force regarding the conduction of qi. The proper dance movements in accordance to music were vital to perfecting one’s spirit to be-come a shen; see Jao 2000 and Gong 2000. For a brief discussion of Xunzi’s belief in the efficacy of music and a similar passage from the Guodian manuscript “Xing zi ming chu,” see Goldin 2000, 130-33. A much more detailed discussion of the Guo-dian phrase is in Shen Pei 2003.

61 “Yongye” , in Lunyu zhengyi 7, part 6 (Zhuzi jicheng , vol. 1, 119). See Qian Xuan 1996, 598.

62 This account is drawn from “Sang daji,” in Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 22, 13.1a-2b, a notation version of which seems to be preserved in “Jixi, ji”; see Yili Zhengzhu 13.19a-24b.

63 According to Zheng Xuan, dao is to ask forgiveness from the guishen (Lunyu zheng-yi 8, part 7, Zhuzi jicheng, vol. 1, 153).

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five sacrifices to exhaust their emotions (qing) and specialists prayed to the spirits above and below.64 When the dying one breathed his last, the sons broke out into crying and the wife leaped about wailing.65 Leaping was an extreme expression of grief (second only perhaps to complete prostration)66 prescribed at certain moments of mourning ritual along with the baring of the shoulders, binding the hair and waist with bands of rough fibers—all meant as expressions of communication with the spirit.67 These expressions of grief and the changes of clothing marked successive stages of the mourning ritual.68

Studies of mourning rituals in other cultures show that mortuary rituals often marked the transition of the dead to the world of spirits or to a new social identity as a spirit.69 The rituals in pre-Han China that marked transitions from death through the traditional three-year period of mourning (for an elite male with progeny) ensured the social iden-tity of the deceased—an identity that would eventually link together all aspects of the deceased: the aspects resident in his tomb, in his spirit tablet in the temple, and in Heaven. While the performance and even the names of these transition rituals likely varied by place and time, the Han ritual compendiums provide a sketch that no doubt applied to the Jiangling area. The first set of rituals involved “resuscitation,” or “sum-moning the soul” and preparation of the body.70

Accounts vary as to whether the resuscitation ritual took place before, after, or during body preparation. In one account, someone would also immediately grab the ritual clothes the deceased used while alive71 and

64 See “Shu er” , in Lunyu zhengyi 8, part 7 (Zhuzi jicheng , vol. 1, 152-53). By the Warring States period, the Five Sacrifices (wusi ) were most likely to the spirits of the door, the stove, the Central Drainspout or impluvium (zhongliu), gate, and the well (Zhou 1992, 303). Chard 1999, 238-41, points out that the Liji account of the Five Sacrifices probably postdated the 3d-c. BCE.

65 Mourners should leap three times; also mentioned in the Guodian “Yucong” text, hence we know that the custom precedes the Han-era ritual texts (see Chen

Wei 2000, 145-46).66 See the explanation in the Liji chapter “Tangong, shang” (Liji zhengyi, sect. 3, 2.2b).67 See “Tangong” (Liji zhengyi, sect. 3, 2.15b, sect. 4, 3.2a, 4a-b), a section of which

explains how leaping and beating the breast are the ultimate expressions of distress, whose successive stages of emotion (qing) were: happiness, singing, swaying, dancing, heat, loneliness, lamenting, breast beating, and leaping (Liji zhengyi, sect. 4, 3.8a).

68 The accounts of clothing changes for mourners are varied, and will not be an-alyzed here; e.g., the Yili chapter “Shi sangfu.” I suspect that leaping and clothing changes also helped to separate the living from the dead and to protect the living.

69 See especially the essay by Chesson 2001, 1-11.70 See Liji chapter “Tangong, shang” (Liji zhengyi, sect. 3, 2.21b).71 According to the Liji,” Sang daji” (Liji zhengyi, sect. 22, 13.1a-b) and “Zaji” (Liji

death as journey 33

climb up to the rooftop from the south and call the deceased’s name to the north. He would then fling the clothes down to another person be-low who would run and place them on top of the deceased. The first person would then climb down from the northwest corner.72 Although it is clear that the editing of the ritual texts was affected by the correlative cosmological concerns of their Han editors,73 the relationship of these ritual movements to the Four Directions—a concern clearly evident in buildings and burials since the Shang period—becomes significant when we consider the direction of spirit flight. Clearly, in this ritual account, immediately upon death the aspect, or spirit, of the person that would respond to his name was believed to fly northwards. The North is ex-plained in the Liji as a dark region (you ) filled with guishen.74 On the other hand, the path to Heaven was in the West.

A focus on corners (northwest, versus North or West) in the summon-ing ritual may reflect a Han concern with Five Phases versus Four Regions cosmology and divination. We find that some Western Han cosmic boards (shi ) indicate that a path radiating from the center (where the Dipper acts as a divinatory dial) to the northwest was the Heavenly Gate, the path to the northeastern corner was the Ghost Gate, the southeastern corner was the Earth Gate, and the southwestern was the Human Gate.75 Each

zhengyi, sect. 20, 12.4a, 8b), each item of ritual clothing had a special name that varied according to rank. According to Zheng Xuan (Liji zhengyi, sect. 20, 12.8b), the cloth-ing was used to “summon the hun and restore the po.” For a shi, an important item was the quebian , a kind of hat with a flat top that cocked upwards like a small bird, made of reddish-black que leather. The complete ritual outfit for a shi is described in Yili zhushu, j. 2, 6 (Shisanjing zhushu, vol. 1, 950). It includes the hat, a light red skirt, a cloak with embroidered trim and black belt, and red slippers (see also the discus-sion by Chao 2001,89-90, 114).

72 Yili, “Shi sangli” (Yili zhushu 12, 184-85; Shisanjing zhushu, vol. 1, 1128-29); Qian Xuan 1996, 598. In the “Li yun” chapter of the Liji an abbreviated version is mentioned, but the head of the deceased was placed to the north because the prov-ince of life was in the south. They called up to Heaven because the qi rose whereas the corporeal po (tipo ) descended (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 9, 7.3a).

73 See especially the work on this subject by Peng Lin 1990 and 1991.74 In “Tangong, shang,” Liji zhengyi, sect. 2, 3.3b. A note later in this same chap-

ter claims that earlier, the dead were buried with their heads pointing north because this direction represents “darkness” (Liji zhengyi, sect. 2, 3.5a). This has been discov-ered to be the case in many Western Zhou burials (see examples in Zhouyuan bowu-guan 2005).

75 See examples esp. from Shuanggudui, a review of earlier scholarly studies, and discussion, all by Li Ling 2000, 89-176. The most recent study of the four paths, seen on two different styles of cosmic board, the TLV (with blocked-out corners) and shi (with clear paths), is by Xing 2005.

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direction was marked with a hexagram, which Lian Shaoming claims re-flects the function of each gate: Heaven=exit (chu ), Ghost=death (si

), Earth=enter (ru ), and Human=birth (sheng ).76 We know that Shao Tuo’s diviners consulted hexagrams in their divination, but it is not at all clear how the hexagrams were derived or even interpreted. There is little evidence that the Chu elite in the fourth century BCE adhered to the complex correlative cosmology popular during the Han period, when shi boards were popular. Indeed, a look at both the Chu silk manu-script (with trees in the corners and no marked gates)77 and the classical concern for the Four Directions in Chu tomb construction suggests a basic adherence to a more rudimentary set of correlations: East=Spring, South=Summer, West=Fall, and North=Winter.78 There is no record of the divination boards being used to divine the direction a spirit might go after death (on the path to Heaven? As a ghost? Or perhaps reborn as a human?),79 although it is clear that the North and West were directions linked to death and East and South with life, and it is likely that these very basic correlations were quite ancient.

In another account of attempted resuscitation of the corpse imme-diately upon death, the spirit is called to the northwest only after the preparation of the body and purification rituals. The basic directional

76 Lian Shaoming 1987, 34-35.77 Xing 2005 notes the basic ya shape of the text and 12 month-spirits with trees

depicted in the corners instead of gates. Li Ling 2000, 159-65, 190-216, discusses the preoccupation of the diviner boards, the Chu silk manuscript, and the Day Books with time. I suspect that the 12 spirits, which represent the months on the four sides of the Chu silk manuscript also represented body parts (heart, lungs, stomach, etc.) perhaps reminders of sacrifices (for a clear illustration, see Li Ling 2000, fig. 47). Li Ling 1998, 252, believes that the forms were depictions of animals. The images were clearly multivalent in nature. One cultural aspect of the Chu silk manuscript that schol-ars should keep in mind is that it was discovered in a tomb in Changsha before 1949, an era when Changsha and not Jiangling was considered the center of late Warring States-period Chu culture. Since then, excavations have shown that Changsha culture was a mix of diverse southern cultures.

78 Based on the Chu Silk Manuscript, Li Ling 2000, 190, claims that the corners also correlate to colors: NW=green, SE=red, SW=white, NW=black.

79 Li Ling’s list of concerns for divination (Li Ling 2000, 164-65) contains “death” (si ), but in the pre-Qin records that I am familiar with the subject is concerned about predicting his death or, in the case of Shao Tuo, preventing his death. The Liji, “Zaji” refers to the use of stalk divination regarding the time and place of the inter-ment and tortoise divination regarding the mourning rituals by shrine officials before the resuscitation rituals (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 20, 12.3b-4a). The same chapter records an invocation of naming (of the mourners) and tortoise divination regarding the fu-neral (zangyu ) (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 20, 12.14a).

death as journey 35

correlations are again reflected in the records on the purification of the body after death and the presentation of food offerings, although slight variations in the timing of events recorded reflect what was likely an even greater diversity in pre-Han practices.80 According to Han accounts, the attendants moved the corpse back from the floor to the bed (in one account, a mat-covered bed beneath a southern window), removed his clothes and covered the body with a shroud while preparing the bath. Then they put a wedge between the teeth to keep the mouth open for later food offerings and bound the feet to a stool to keep them at the right angle for putting on shoes. Ice was put under the bed.81 In front of the bed (towards the east in the Yili account), they set out dishes of dried meats, minced meats, and sweet wines;82 beside the corpse they placed items of his daily life and new wine to help give the spirit form, an iden-tity, or “image” (xiang ). The attraction of the wandering spirit to items used by the deceased while alive is seen in the account of the resuscitation ritual, above, where attendants used his clothes to summon his spirit. It is also a factor that will be examined when we look at items of daily or personal use placed in the northern chamber of Shao Tuo’s tomb.

The Yili and Liji accounts are particularly concerned with the exact protocol of visitors according to rank, what clothing they and the hosts should wear at what stage of the mourning, their behavior with the host, the host’s behavior towards them, and where they stand during which part of the funeral. These details (which vary slightly in different accounts) will not be elaborated here except to note that the correlations of life and death with the directions, as noted above, seem to be consistent: North and West were linked to Yin and the pollution of death; West was associ-ated with the direction the spirit should go.83 In the Yili account the eldest

80 Qian Xuan 1996, 614-16, discusses Warring States controversies over burial style; also Poo 1990 and Riegel 1995. The “Tangong” chapter of the Liji, with its question and answer style, seems to be a response to different traditions and accounts in cir-culation (e.g., Liji zhengyi, sect. 3, 2.19, regarding the placement of the food offerings during the xiaolian stage of dressing the corpse).

81 The placement of a basin or pan of ice to preserve corpses during the wash-ing of corpses and during larger funerals in the third month of the year is referred to in the Zuozhuan, Zhao 4 (Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 352); Zhouli, “Tianguan, Lingren” , (Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 3, j. 10, 69), Yili “Shi sangli” (Yili zhushu, 36, 189, Shisanjing zhushu, vol. 1, 1133), Zhou Wenbai 1998, 202-03.

82 See illustration from the Mawangdui banner, Wu 1992, 124. This scene is de-scribed in Yili, “Shi sangli” (Yili zhushu 35, 185, Shisanjing zhushu, vol. 1, 1129). In the Yili account, the hall (tang) is curtained off.

83 Although in a passage attributed to Confucius, he chanted the following while

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son, the host, climbs the western stairs to a curtained-off hall and faces southeast to command and send off the person who would announce the death. Guests paid their respects to the east of the bed and the host’s family was situated to the west (facing east). The wife (and other close fe-male relations in the Liji account) faced westward.84 Other relatives faced north and all wept.85 Mourning took place in numerous stages involving shifting positions (usually moving up the western stairs and facing east), weeping, bowing, and leaping (or not leaping when specified). Visitors presented shrouds.86 The Yili account goes on to explain that a flag or “inscription” (ming )87 proclaiming that it was Mr. So-and-So’s coffin was formed by tying black and red strips of cloth to a bamboo pole. It was first placed behind where the coffin would be on the western stairs and later placed on top of the coffin. To prepare the bath, a pit was dug in the southernmost part of the western steps, and the dirt was piled into a mound beneath the western window. New basins and jars and a grain vessel were set at the foot of the steps. Towels, combs, and bathing clothes were placed in baskets and also set at the foot of the western steps. After the grain was boiled, the water was placed in the basins and taken into the house. With relatives of the deceased standing behind the door, two attendants lifted the bed at an angle so that the water used by two other attendants to wash the body ran down to the foot of the bed into a pan and could eventually be dumped into the pit.88 The two attendants then trimmed the deceased’s mustache, hair, and nails; bound up and pinned his hair; and put on his three layers of grave clothes,89 covered his face

circling a burial mound: “While it is fate that the bones and flesh shall return to the earth, the hunqi could be anywhere” (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 4, 3.17a).

84 Liji, “Dasang ji” (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 22, 13.2a-b); Yili zhushu, 35, 185, Shisanjing zhushu, vol. 1, 1129. The Yili account has only the wife facing east.

85 The Yili account varies slightly. Relatives are in the “room” (shi) with all the women outside the door facing north, and all the men below the “hall” (tang) fac-ing north.

86 See the Yili, “Shi sangli” (Yili zhushu 35, 185-86, Shisanjing zhushu, vol. 1, 1129-30).87 In the “Tangong” chapter of the Liji the inscription is defined as a “numinous

flag” (ming mingjing ye ) created so his son can “recognize” (shi ) him (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 4, 3.4a).

88 In the Liji, “Fang ji” chapter, Confucius explains that the corpse was washed in the impluvium (zhongliu) (Liji zhengyi 51, 393; Shisanjing zhushu, vol. 2, 1621). In one account, the body was washed in the kitchen (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 3, 2.8a). I suspect that the small rooms with plumbing behind the raised hall in the Western Zhou build-ing discovered in Fengchu served both for preparing bodies and sacrificial victims for funerals and sacrifices.

89 See Wu Hong’s illustration of Lady Dai’s grave clothes; Wu 1992, 119.

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with a black cloth (zi ), and placed grain or jade in his mouth.90 All the vessels used in the bath would be buried.91

Dressing the body for the grave and the placement of the dressed corpse into the coffin were stages representing the separation of the dead from the living marked by specific terms found repeated in differ-ent accounts: “stuffing the corpse’s mouth with rice” (han or fan ), the small and large “dressing of the corpse” with displayed sets of grave clothes (lian ), placing the body in the coffin (bin ), the feast of sepa-ration before a journey (zu or chuzu ), and “burial” (zang ).92 The changing of clothes and successive layers of clothes or shrouds placed on the corpse after the purification of the body and before the encof-fining and burial (itself a process of layers) were, as mentioned above, matched with successive clothing changes by the mourners (accompa-nied with much hand washing)—all aimed at separating the living from the dead and helping the dead make the transition to the grave.93 Each stage was also marked with expressions of grief, such as stamping,94 and with the presentation of food offerings. Boiled and fried grains and dried fish packed into baskets were set near the coffin to attract insects away from the body. In one account, the use of shrouds, curtains, and coffin ornaments, such as feathers, kept the living from feeling disgusted (e ) by the corpse.95 Before burial, friends and relatives of the deceased were treated to a midnight feast, with wine, singing, and entertainment.

90 Qian Xuan 1996, 290, has compared the Yili account of the face covering with some excavated Warring States-period examples and shown the great variety that ex-isted: the face covering of a corpse in Luoyang was silk with jade pieces, while one in Jiangling was a stair-shaped yellow silk with a narrow seam at the top to expose the eyes and several horn-shaped gaps below to expose the jaw. A face covering in the late Western Zhou period Jin Hou tomb in Tianma-Qucun, Shanxi, had a complete jade mask composed of 48 jade pieces sewn onto cloth; see also the face mask from Fufeng , Shaanxi, in Zhouyuan bowuguan 2005, fig. 49. Shao Tuo’s face was cov-ered with a cloth, but the report gives no specifics (Hubei 1991, 68, fig. 50).

91 Based on the Yili, “Shi sangli” (Yili zhushu, j. 35-36, 186-91, Shisanjing zhushu, vol. 1, 1129-35), and the Liji, “Da sangji” (Liji zhengyi 44, 348; Shisanjing zhushu, vol. 2, 1576), Qian Xuan 1996, 599-600.

92 For a simplified list, see “Tangong, shang” in Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 3, 2.12a-b.93 It was especially important for the living to change their clothes after the buri-

al (Liji zhengyi 2.21a). The layers of clothes displayed during the course of a funeral consist of clothing for “resuscitation” (fu), “enshrouding” (lian), “sacrificial presen-tation of offerings” (dian ), and “display (for burial)” (xin ) (Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 11, j. 41, 67).

94 The fact that the stamping is often done in sets of three suggests an exorcist function similar to the Pace of Yu, also done in sets of three when crossing through gates, etc.; see Hu Wenhui 1998, 91-94 and w 233.

95 Liji zhengyi 3.8a-b.

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In the Yili account, the coffin is moved to the ancestral shrine be-fore burial. An invoker (zhu ) shouts three times to warn the spirit of the move which was likely done before dawn. Horses and carts trans-port the coffin, and an accompanying feast employs “numinous vessels” (mingqi ) as well as beloved objects used by the deceased during his life, musical instruments, weapons, and objects such as a staff (used by one after he mourns the loss of his own parent),96 hat, and fan. As the funeral procession starts, the gifts are collected and tallied. The farewell feast is held and the list of gifts read out loud. (In another account, how-ever, those who walked with the funeral were gagged and led by artisans with feathers or reeds of white grass.)97 After the coffin is carried to the burial pit, but before being bound shut, family members cry and pres-ent offerings. Three times they call, “We respectfully perform the burial on an auspicious chronogram (a day in the sixty-day ritual calendar cho-sen through divination).” After the coffin is closed, they cry and present more offerings, which attendants put on carts and carry with the body into the tomb. Unfortunately no account clearly states exactly the dispo-sition of the “numinous vessels,” food packets, and other items placed into the tomb. The Yili tells us simply that they are set up “at the sides” (yu pang ).98 The sons set up an ancestral altar inside the tomb for the deceased’s own presentation of mortuary feasts to his ancestral spirits. Sacrificial foods are placed in the tomb and then other grave goods are added. Laments are sung. After the deceased relatives and friends emerge from the tomb, they sacrifice to the earth and road spirits and, again back in the shrine and house, to the deceased’s wandering spirit.99

In general, during the three years of mourning, mourners would per-form sacrifices at set periods to settle the spirit in the shrine and in Heaven. On one hand, these sacrifices made sure that the souls did not have to stay underground in a region called the Yellow Springs (huangquan ).100 On the other hand, they also symbolized the gradual release of the mourners from the suffering of the mourning rituals (living at first in a primitive manner: in a hut, with crude clothing and nothing but gruel to eat).101

96 Liji, “Wen sang” (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 35, 18.7b-8a ).97 Liji, “Zaji” (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 21, 12.16a).98 Yili Zhengzhu 13.17a.99 This account is largely drawn from the Yili chapter “Jixi” (Yili Zhengzhu 13). Some

details can be found in Liji, “Sang daji” (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 22, 13.9a-15b).100 Loewe 2005, 103.101 This is described in the Liji chapters “Wen sang,” “Fu wen,” “Jianzhuan,” “San-

death as journey 39

At each of these feasting ceremonies, the corpse is represented by a personator, presumably a grandson, but referred to directly as “Corpse” (shi ). The ceremonies, which had different names depending on the time interval represented (e.g., xiang after the first year, and a Greater Xiang after the second year with a dan a month later), began on the day of burial and involved a ritual called yu , which, according to the Han-period commentator Zheng Xuan, meant “to calm” (the spirit) (an ).102 According to the Shuowen, the word yu referred to a mythical animal called zouyu ,103 which by some accounts was a black and white striped tiger that consumed dead flesh, and by others a phoenix or “spirit bird” (lingniao ).104 The Yili chapter that describes the yu ritual men-tions the setting up of a meat sacrifice in which a personator partakes, an action no doubt symbolizing the feeding of the deceased’s spirit. No mention is made of tigers or birds.105 Yet, we might keep in mind the set intervals of mourning, and the role of sacrificial vessels decorated with tigers, dragons, and phoenixes.106 This was in some sense the consumma-tion of the memory of the corpse, as the deceased’s qi slowly, over the course of the mourning period, became established in its new identity as a spirit.107 Less abstract is the role at the “calming” sacrifice of the per-sonator, also called a yushi , the “corpse” performer of yu, as well as the role of the sacrificial victims, also called yusheng .108 On the day of the burial, after the personator was set up with the sacrificial meal before him (or her, if the deceased was female), the mourners ceased

nian wen” (Liji Zhengzhu 35-38) and referred to in many other chapters (e.g., “Zaji, xia” Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 21, 12.15a-b).

102 Yili Zhengzhu mulu 4b. A description of this ritual is preserved in chapter “Shi yuli” in the Yili (Yili Zhengzhu, j. 14).

103 The earliest textual reference to the zouyu is in a hunting song preserved in the “Shaonan” section of the Shijing, Mao no. 25. A burial song called the “Yu bin”

is mentioned in the Zuozhuan, Ai 11 (Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 482). 104 Shuowen jiezi, vol. 4, 1348-52. The word yu had other usages as well, for example,

a yuren was a person who worked in the forests and marshes, and the yushi was a chief of the pre-Xia dynasty of Yu and another term for the sage king Shun

(who according to later myth had a tiger official named yuhu ). Of course, the oldest reading attested in inscriptions is as a sound word representing a sigh of la-ment or as a loan for a place name, wu .

105 Yili chapter “Shi yuli” (Yili Zhengzhu, j. 14).106 By the late Warring States period, winged dragons and tigers were common

motifs; see Li Ling 2004, 87-144.107 The Liji, “Sang daji,” notes that the body cases, cloth bags pulled over the

corpse before the formal dressings, were striped black and white along the lower half for rulers and high level officers (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 22, 13.9a).

108 Liji, “Tangong, xia” (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 4, 3.5a).

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wailing, because “the service for the living being was finished and the service for the ghost had begun.” 109 The consummation of once living flesh by the symbolic dead, the “Corpse,” represents a critical moment in the metamorphosis of the deceased’s identity.

The costume of the real corpse and the imitation corpse, the persona-tor—if we knew what it was like—should help us discern the validity of the connection between the sacrifice and the animal, particularly, if we could imagine the funeral march to the burial ground as a kind of pa-rade110 involving masked exorcists, along the lines of the “leaving” sac-rifice (zu ) described by Mark Lewis for the Annual Exorcism.111 We might imagine a Chi You -like figure dressed as a tiger with horns, carrying weapons or a spirit-bird figure, something like the death-god, shamanic figure Rushou .112 According to the Zhouli, the mourning garments for an elite officer had dark (xuan )- and light (su )-edged garments (duan ).113 We see some evidence of this pattern in the clothing wrapped around a corpse from the Jiangling area. Although the costume as a whole was not obviously animal- or bird-like in design, the prevalence of black and white stripes, phoenixes, and tiger images is suggestive. The body in Tomb Number 1 at Mashan was wrapped in multiple lay-ers of what might described as oversized long sleeved coats. The lapels and cuffs of some of these were striped black and white, and the cloth of the body of the coat embroidered with multi-colored phoenixes dancing on one foot or facing the viewer (a similar style is found on the woman directing a dragon and a phoenix with her hands in a painting from Chen-jia dashan ).114 Tigers were embroidered or woven into shrouds

109 Liji, “Tangong, xia” (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 4, 3.15b). The shrine holding the spirit tablets was painted black and white when the personator was present at subsequent sacrifices (see Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 11, j. 41, 73).

110 Loewe 2005, 108, notes that the “gestures of respect” offered to the deceased’s spirit tablet in the shrine and the offerings “were designed to ensure his well-being”; also that in the case of the Han emperor, these rituals often involved parades that acted as the “symbolical re-enactment of the emperor’s last journey.”

111 Lewis 1990, 185-95. A stone figure with a striped tiger-like animal mask but no horns was found in Hebei (see Li Ling 2004, plate 24).

112 Rushou is mentioned in late Warring States and later texts, linked to Autumn, the harvest, the west, and the zha annual exorcism. He seems to be an earth god who punishes (xing ) for Heaven; see Ding 2001, 7-12; Riegel 1989-90.

113 Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 11, j. 41, 59. The dress is mentioned in the Lunyu as worn by a ritualist (xiaoxiang ), who brings guests in and out of the ancestral shrine and announces the stages of the ceremony (Lunyu zhengyi, j. 14, “Xianjin,” sect. 11, in Zhuzi jicheng, vol. 1, 254-57).

114 See Li Ling 2004, 165, fig. 2; or Cook and Major 1999, 145, fig. 9.1.

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along with more abstract dragon-and-phoenix designs. On one finely embroidered example, orange-and-black striped tigers stand out against a pale abstract dragon-and-phoenix design.115 While it is unlikely that any of these animals—all typical décor on items found in tombs, ranging from clothing, coffins, vessels lacquerware, and music stands—represented the zouyu per se, they do clearly show up as animal-conveyances used by poets and kings for their tours of the supernatural cosmos.116 In Chapter Five, I discuss the role of the hybrid tomb-guardian figure, part tiger, part dragon, often bifurcated into two masked faces with long tongues, and antlers on its heads. I suggest that this figure may have represented the consumption of the dead, the shedding of the deceased’s corporeal self, and transmutation into a new winged form.

Shao Tuo’s shrouds were not so well preserved, but the imagery pre-served on other artifacts in his tomb strongly suggests that while his body was bound tightly within his coffin, some aspect of him was expected to escape and transcend. It is likely that the funeral rituals practiced in Jiang-ling varied from the accounts in the ritual texts, which seemed to have a relatively northern bias. The Liji, for example, notes the regrettable Chu custom of asking important visitors to help dress the corpse (instead of the formal presentation of gift shrouds to the host as advocated elsewhere).117 On the other hand, many of the objects found inside the tomb—combs, baskets of food, insect pupae, basins, and so forth—correlate well with the ritual described above. What we see also in the layout of the tomb is not only the environment in which Shao Tuo’s body was laid to rest, but an environment that prepared his spirit with the necessary equip-ment—weapons, chariot, food, servants, folding bed, documents—for a long journey, one that likely took three years of wandering before he found his way to Heaven. From the divination text buried with Shao Tuo, analyzed in detail in Chapter Four, we know that the deities of the

115 Hubeisheng Jiangzhou dicu bowuguan 1985, figs.1-28. Wooden servants placed in the tomb to accompany the dead were dressed with black and white lapels and a long dress with a phoenix on the front (fig. 31). The same black and white striped material was used to wrap a mirror (fig. 30.2).

116 See the Chu painting from a tomb in Changsha reproduced in Li Ling 2004, 165, fig. 1, in which a chariot is a dragon. For transcendence in Chu art and writing, see Major 1999, 139-41. For a discussion of similar themes for the Shang and early China in general, see Allan 1991, 124-76, esp. her discussion of the bronze images of the ti-gers consuming/giving birth to humans (Allan 1991, 149-54, figs. 42a, 43a, 44a-b).

117 Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 4, 3.13b-14a. This custom suggests that the robes on the corpse in Mashan were gifts from visitors.

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Earth, Heaven, and the Wilds controlled the fate of the living and the dead. In the following chapter, we examine the contents of Shao Tuo’s tomb and discuss the symbolism of Inner and Outer in medicine and inherent in the creation of a sacred plot, or burial ground, for the safe burial of the deceased.

CHAPTER THREE

ENTERING THE EARTH

Ancestral spirits were the most powerful forces controlling the fates of individuals in ancient China. Records of divination and sacrifice dating from the second millennium BCE attest to their powers. The natural powers of the cosmos, controlled by the High God (shangdi )—a figure whose identity as either a supreme ancestor or abstract force has inspired a long scholarly debate,1 were a secondary source of concern. As Shao Tuo’s body continued to fail him and large sacrifices to his ances-tors seemed to have had less and less value, ritualists focused attention on the earth gods—those who controlled Shao’s home, the passageways to the outside, and the outside or “wilds” (ye, written in excavated texts as , and in most transmitted texts as ). Since the period of earliest recorded history, the late Shang period (ca. 1200-1045 BCE), “earth” or “land” (tu , the ancient graph for which depicted a mound on top of a horizontal line , sometimes with droplets of liquid on top),2 has been associated with its worship at the “earth altar” (she ), a potent super-natural force that protected the worshippers from disasters and required animal sacrifices and exorcism rituals.3 In transmitted textual records as-sociated with the Zhou rule (Western Zhou period, 1046-771 BCE), the security of the Earth Altar was equivalent to the stability of the state, and in tales of the Chunqiu period (772-476 BCE), the Altar’s destruc-tion signaled political annihilation. Texts transmitted from the Warring States and early Han periods confirm that the Earth Altar played the role of intermediary between Earth and Heaven; it was a place where ghosts and spirits gathered.

1 See K. C. Chang 1976, 156-59.2 Some scholars feel that the shape represented a version of the phallic ancestral

altar, zu , and that ye written was a variant (see Hwang 1996, 345).3 Allan 1991, chapter 4; Keightley 2000, 61-65. Kominami 1987 attempts to trace

back to prehistorical origins the Earth Altar constructed of a mound of earth and stone with a cosmic tree planted in the center. Ding 2001, 1, 15, claimed that the Shang earth god was female. See also Chao 2001, 315-28, on sacrifices at the earth altar.

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By Warring States times, the Earth Altar was also associated with agri-culture, the Millet God (Ji ), other agricultural gods, and the fecundity of cultivated land—in contrast to the Wilds, or uncultivated land. When a walled settlement (yi ) or city (guo ) was created that symbolized the center of a new state (within the cosmogram of the Four Regions), an Earth Altar was constructed and water buffalo, goats, and pigs sacrificed.4 Every political layer or unit of managed land had an Earth Altar—from the state, down through each province (zhou ) and village (li ),5 to private elite residences (gongshi ). Descriptions of such altars during this period vary according to time and place: it was a pile of earth (feng

), a copse of tall trees, a single tree, a single tree in a mound of earth, or a mound of earth with some sort of grass structure on top. Some may have had yards around them or had wooden shrines.6 In form (but not necessarily in size), they seem to have replicated Warring States-period tombs, built with mounds (also called feng), and sometimes planted with trees and surrounded with mausoleum parks, villages, and shrines.7 In some schemes, Earth Altars were built for the Four Regions and planted with four trees, symbolic of the cosmos as in the Chu Silk Manuscript.8 It seems most likely that Shao Tuo’s diviners sacrificed to a local Earth Altar that reflected either his “province” or his residence. Evidence that the altar was in fact a zhoushe is suggested by the plaintive note on the back of the last divination text, no doubt written after Shao Tuo’s death, claiming that the diviners could not find the name of the zhou (from which the curse originated) (bu zhi qi zhou ming ). Also, the diviners sacrificed to the earth gods (variously termed Hou Tu, written or

, or Dizhu ) of the Residence and the Wild, clearly understood as representing different jurisdictions from that of the she.

According to the Zhouli, public sacrifices at the Provincial Earth Altar occurred annually, featured some archery, and involved all the people in its jurisdiction.9 According to the Baoshan divination record, ritualists

4 Wang Shenxing 1988; Chao 1995; Shen Jianhua 1999. See the Shangshu, “Zhao gao” and Yi Zhoushu “Zuo Luo” chapters on the creation of the city Chengzhou (“the Created Zhou” versus “Ancestral Zhou” Zongzhou ). For my discussion of bronze inscription evidence for transition of “territory” (yu ) into the later word “walled city, state” (guo) as a reference to the city of Chengzhou and its role as the sacred center, see Ke [Cook] 2003a.

5 Zhouli, “Zhou zhang” (Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 6, j. 22, 59).6 Chao 2001, 321, 327-28.7 Li Yujie 1991, 170-80. See also Loewe 1999, 86-91, for a brief history of mor-

tuary shrines leading up to Han practice.8 Hwang 1996, 330-46.9 In “Zhouchang” , Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 6, j. 22, 59.

entering the earth 45

directed prayers and sacrifices to the Earth Altar during the summer ex-orcism. This correlates well with research by Ding Shan, Chao Fulin, and others indicating that public worship at the Earth Altar was coterminous with the annual exorcism event (zha or la ).10 A province in fourth century BCE Chu would have been a small parcel of land or administra-tive unit located near the Chu capital.11 It seems likely that Shao Tuo’s diviners worshiped in the zhou that was linked to his ancestors, although he conducted business in over forty local zhou, including one named for his ancestor Pingye Jun ( ). His business there was preceded by business in Piyang—a site where a grand sacrifice mentioned in the divination manuscript (Appendix One) was planned. There, the person with whom he dealt was a certain Gu, a name shared by a group of divin-ers who tried to cure Shao Tuo when he fell sick.12 Both places could not be far from the zhou belonging to the Mo’ao (> ), a royal lineage, the Ying clan , and the Shao shang family.13

Sacrifices to the earth gods of the Residence and Wilds did not nec-essarily take place during the time of the annual exorcism. Possible loca-tions of such sacrifices that were mentioned in early texts were near the gate of the ancestral shrine and to the right side inside the main gate of the residence. The lord of the house prayed at the Earth Altar and of-fered meat sacrifices to it when he traveled or in case of natural disasters. Some scholars suggest that by the late Warring States or early Han period the Earth Altar was also called the “Inner Central Earth” (nei zhong tu

) or the “Central Drainspout (impluvium)” (zhongliu )14—a god to whom meat sacrifice was offered and a site where the dead might be washed—and ultimately the more modern Kitchen God.15 This suggests a link to the spatial deities worshipped in the Five Sacrifices (wusi ), which according to a set of five differently shaped wooden slips placed in a basket in the western chamber of Shao Tuo’s tomb, consisted of the door (hu ), the stove (zao ), the chamber (shi ), the gate (men ),

10 See chap. 2, above, n. 48.11 Chen Wei 1996a, 86-93, identified 41 in the Baoshan administrative text. Some

clearly centered on burials (e.g., the Xuan Wang zhi zhai zhou ), but most seem to be named for officials.

12 Hubei 1991, strip 181. Chen Wei 1996b, 87. Also, see below, app. 1, VI.1 (strips 218-19).13 For Mo’ao, see Blakeley 1999, 56-59. It is unclear if there is any relationship

between Shaoshang and the name Shao.14 The Qin strips from Shuihudi (Rishu, yi , , slip 31) use the term “Inner

Central Earth.” See Yang 2004, for a study of the different terms used. 15 Chao 1995, 68; Chard 1980, 151-53.

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and the walkway (xing ). According to Chen Wei, gods associated with the chamber or impluvium included the Earth God of the Residence.16

The Earth Lord of the Wilds, on the other hand, was an earth god that controlled land beyond the walls of the residence and the city and beyond the surrounding area of cultivated fields. Since the uncultivated land in the hills around Jiangling is where the Chu elite buried their dead, it is likely that the Earth Lord of the Wilds was the deity who controlled the family burial ground, which is the site near Baoshan where Shao Tuo was eventually buried. The link between the Wilds and the burial ground is suggested in the Liji, which notes that once living beings die, they “return to earth” and are then referred to as ghosts whose “bones and meat” are buried below. “ The crypt then becomes the Wild Land.”17 The word translated as crypt was written with the graph used to represent the Yin force, but it is generally understood to stand for a word meaning “shade” or “underground room.”18 The presentation of animal sacrifices to the Earth Lord of the Wild (ye dizhu ) suggests that the Chu had some sort of shrine or altar in or near their burial grounds. In Eastern Han, and later, tombs, “tomb contracts” (muquan ) or “grave secur-ing writs” (zhenmu wen ) written on blocks or pottery jars were placed in the tomb as proof to a litigious underworld bureaucracy of officials to allow the deceased safe passage.19 The early Han equivalents, called “gao di ce ,” were written on bamboo slips—sometimes as part of the tomb inventory texts—to report the burial and its contents to the lord of the underworld.20 While we cannot clearly reconstruct an underground bureaucracy for fourth century BCE China, we can envision the tomb inventory text as a report to the underworld—perhaps to the Earth Lord and his snake, turtle, and “earth goat” assistants. It is clear from many of the items placed in Shao Tuo’s and other Jiangling tombs that the recently deceased human spirits upon burial expected to feast, report to, ward off, and battle a range of supernatural powers.

16 Chen Wei 1996a, 165-69, links the God of Fate (siming ) to the impluvium and the God of Disasters ( ) to the stove. Yang Hua 2004 has explored this con-nection further.

17 Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 24, 14.10a.18 Zheng Xuan glossed yin as “shade,” which is a loan for yin “underground

room” (see Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 24, 14.10a, and Wang Li 2000, 1094).19 Kleeman 1982; Nickerson 2002, 59-60. 20 Yang Hua 1999 (rpt. 2004, 38).

entering the earth 47

1. SHAO TUO’S BURIAL

Shao Tuo’s tomb was structured to accord with the cosmological scheme of his time, which was the static and square Four Regions pattern over-laid with the moving, circular Five Phases. The former reflected the earth, and the latter the heavens.21 The Four Regions pattern, about a millennium old, symbolized a square earth with the ego represented by the king positioned in the center. Outside of the center were four “re-gions” (fang) inhabited by non-kin outsiders and forces both human and supernatural that had to be overcome or appeased when one traveled in their region.22 The complex correlations linking every aspect of time and physical change to Yin, Yang and the rise (de ) and fall (xing ) of the five natural agents (water, fire, metal, wood, and earth) so popular during the Han period were still in a nascent stage during Shao Tuo’s lifetime.23 An examination of Shao Tao’s burial arrangement and the items in his tomb makes it obvious that some of the correlations had ancient ori-gins and were being recombined into new systems rather than invented whole-cloth. The objects placed in his tomb also reveal to us what the ancient Chinese believed were the essentials for travel through a danger-ous supernatural landscape.

Shao’s head was buried to the East, the direction that in later times would be associated with rebirth, the spring season, the color green, and the wood phase (of the Five Phases). A huge banquet was set in the compartment above his head. On his left side, in the compartment to the South—the direction of life, summer, red, and fire—was packed his military equipment. At his feet, in the compartment to the West—the di-rection of spiritual quest, autumn, white, and metal—were packed Shao’s personal effects for the road. To his right, in the North compartment—the direction of death, winter, black, and water—were packed the items Shao would need to protect himself and to prove his identity and rank when he met the spirits in the underworld, on his journey, or in Heaven. The records of his administrative cases and of his diviners’ attempts to

21 The idea of the moving wuxing versus the static sifang is from A. Wang 2000, 75-128.

22 For details on this early cosmology see Allan 1991, 74-111; A. Wang 2000, 23-74; Keightley 2000. The fang received sacrifices along with Earth Altar, Shijing “Yun Han” (Mao 258). See the discussion by Chao 2001, 284.

23 See the discussion in the previous chapter. The idea of a nascent correlative sys-tem, clearly evident in the 3d-c. BCE Shuihudi bamboo texts, is drawn from Harper’s work (esp. 2001), but taken one step further back in time.

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appease the cursing spirit were placed among all the effects of a scholar continuing his trade—a bamboo mat, a low table, a writing brush, and a knife for trimming the bamboo slips—as well as carved ritual objects he would carry on his person to protect him from the cursing spirits.

The tomb functioned as an underground extension of the above-ground sending-off feast—likewise supplied with an orchestra, musi-cians and attendants (the underground versions carved in wood, with real hair and movable arms), and a large array of food and drink. As the underground palace for the body, the tomb provided the deceased all the necessary equipment for travel away from civilization: horse and chariot pieces, weapons, clothing and grooming articles packed in cases, a collapsible bed, food wrapped in baskets, and religious items essential for protecting the traveler along the way.

Shao Tuo’s body, hair pinned with bone and body wrapped in silk, with limbs bound to the body, had been carried westward down an east-facing ramp. On his body were placed five jade circlets and two jade half-circlets—symbols of immortality and prestige.24 His head was placed to the east and his body was enclosed inside three inner coffins made of cedar and catalpa planks and two outer coffins made of elm planks.25 The tomb was buried under six layers of different colored clays.26 The jades, woods, and clays were selected to preserve his tomb and body. The items prepared for the feast and the journey were placed inside of com-partments in the outermost coffin built in a swirling pattern around the central burial chamber (see figure 1). In the center, at the bottom of the tomb pit, was an oblong waist pit, a pit dug into the tomb floor under the coffin. A symbol of good fortune and fertility, a young mountain goat (Capra hircus) with horns wrapped in silk had been placed in the pit with its head also to the east.27 The sacrifice of the goat in a pit in the center of the tomb is reminiscent of animal sacrifices to the impluvium and to the

24 See Childs-Johnson 1998 and 2002, 15-24, 64.25 These are not the same specifications as listed in the ritual texts (see Chao 2001,

295-301), but I suspect this is due not only to regional variation but also to the fact that the ritual texts did not really represent standard practice.

26 According to the “Zuo Luo” , a late chapter of the Yi Zhou shu (5.8a-b, sect. 48), the Earth Altar was constructed of “five colors” of earth but these were laid out accord-ing to the Five Phase correlations: E=green, S=red, W= white, N=black, Center=yellow. A covering of yellow earth pulled out through a hole drilled in one side is used to cover the tumulus along with a thatch (ju ) of white grass (baimao ).

27 Hubei, vol. 1, 45-51. Although mountain goats and goat horns have been found at archaeological sites since Neolithic times, and the practice of putting a deer or dog in the wastepit can be traced back to the Shang and Western Zhou periods, in Chu

entering the earth 49

earth god recorded for Earth Altar sacrifices in the residence and else-where. Tales of legal suits being solved by the sacrifice of goats during the

annual public Earth Altar sacrifice suggest too that this goat may have served in a similar role in prov-ing the innocence of Shao Tuo before an underworld court.28 The underground register in the Mawangdui funeral painting shows two “earth goats” (four-legged horned dragon-like white creatures) and a central human-like figure, naked and squat, holding up the ground—a fig-ure which Wu Hong has identified as the Lord of the Earth.29 Outside this earthly compartment are creatures such as snakes, turtles, and owls.30 The tomb compartments and their contents were in-tended not only to keep

of the Warring States period, the choice of a goat may have had more to do with its association with good fortune. The Shuowen (vol. 4, 311) defines yang as xiang “good fortune.” For the popularity of horns in Chu art and as a symbol of fertility, see Demattè 1994, 36-44; So 1999, 45-46; and Major 1999, 132-34.

28 This tale from Mozi “Ming gui, xia” , (Mozi jiangu, sect. 31, j. 8, 144); see Chao 2001, 320-21. There is no evidence yet for the idea of an underworld court dur-ing the Warring States period. This is speculation on the role of the earth god as par-allel to Shangdi and the hierarchy of royal ancestors up in Heaven, evident in bronze inscriptions as early as the late Western Zhou period.

29 Wu 1992, 124-25. The figures are also depicted on Lady Dai’s inner coffins as the earth god; see Li Zhengguang 2002, figs. 60-94, 98. The animals and humans on her inner coffins are wandering through clouds, perhaps as an indication of the jour-ney to heaven.

30 For a close-up color photograph of this scene, see Hunansheng bowuguan 1973, vol. 2, pl. 77.

Figure 1. Tomb CompartmentsNumbers on the boards are the archaeologists’ numbering of boards in each compartment: the central chamber consisted of 11 boards, northern 10 boards, eastern and southern 8, and western 1 (seemingly to suggest that the closer one got to a NW corner and the possible direction of soul flight, the fewer boards needed). The boards were fitted together according to matched sets of notches. The letters indicate woodworking tools left in the tomb. After Hubei, vol. 1, fig. 36.

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dangerous aspects of the deceased’s soul safely underground, but also to aid the metamorphosis of his higher spirit. This metamorphosis in-volved a journey out of the locked inner coffins, through the compart-ments, and out into the wilds.31

1.1. The Inner CoffinsInner coffins were designed for a trifold purpose. They locked in the dangerous corporeal aspect of the dead, in order to protect the living.32 They protected the deceased from evil influences by means of images of terrible beasts—monster masks and sharp-toothed dragon heads. Fi-nally, they also provided a means of escape through painted architectural symbols, possibly the cloud-like hun or ethereal soul. An alternative vi-sion suggests that the inner and outer coffins, individually or as a set, were envisioned as the base of a chariot—so that the tomb itself acted as the metaphoric vehicle of transport.33

Weapons and clothing placed on top of Shao Tuo’s inner coffins were no doubt meant for immediate use by the escaping spirit, helping him fill out his form or “likeness” (xiang). Silk clothing was placed on the lid of the innermost coffin; on the eastern end of the coffin, a bronze appliqué monster-head (taotie , a symbol of consumption)34 seems at an earlier point in time to have held a silk strap from which dangled a jade disk. On the lid were placed a bronze sword with a jade handle, a bronze knife for paring bamboo strips, and some sticks. To the sides, on the south, was a bronze sword with a bone handle, and to the north a bow and arrow set. The sense is that Shao Tuo could immediately outfit himself as both a warrior and a scholar.

31 Yang Yi 2004, 58-59, feels that while spirits were clearly conceived by the Chu people as roaming, by the Han period, when zhenmushou were no longer used in tombs, spirits stayed inside the tomb.

32 For a discussion on the importance of “separation” (bie ) of the dead from the living and how grave goods—purposely incomplete or useless—serve this pur-pose, see Lai 2002, 67-100.

33 For a discussion of the scholarship revealing the tomb as a “house,” see Lai 2003, 43-47, who quotes a passage from Xunzi, “Lilun,” which describes the tomb as a house but the inner and outer coffins as painted boards of a “carriage” (45). One wonders if the words used typically to represent the boards and screen of a chariot might not also have been used for a bed, certainly a more likely piece of equipment to be found in a room of a “house.” However, the presence of actual chariot wheels placed around the inner coffin in early Jin state tombs suggests that, indeed, the im-age of a coffin as a chariot is not misplaced.

34 Hubei, vol. 1, 63, ill. 44. For interpretation of this taotie-style animal mask dé-cor as a symbol of the metamorphosis of the spirit and its relation to early hunting ritual, see Childs-Johnson 1998.

entering the earth 51

On the middle-inner coffin, nine layers of silks were draped. The bot-tom two layers were small lozenge-patterned brocades; the third layer was tied loosely around the second layer; the fourth layer was a net of white and dark brown woven strands binding the second and third lay-ers together; the fifth layer was decorated with embroidered phoenixes; the sixth, seventh, and eighth layers were composed of pieces of smaller coverlets laid out and piled up in layered strips; the ninth and top layer again had embroidered phoenixes. On top of the sixth layer was a round mud seal; on the seventh there were four seals, on the eighth there were three seals—all impressed with the name Fan,35 perhaps the name of the attendant in charge of clothes or a donor. On the seventh layer were the remains of insect pupae.36

The spirit escaped through symbolic windows and doors. The middle-inner coffin had a flat bottom and ends but was rounded on the top and sides, possibly in imitation of a house. On the eastern end architectural

symbols of windows and doors were painted in white: on the lid the sign and on the bottom section the sign

(see figure 2).37 The top and bot-tom were sealed with lacquer paint. The whole coffin was painted with black lacquer inside and out and then bound tightly with interlaced hemp ropes with black, tan, brown, and red threads. The coffin was seated on a woven bamboo mat. The in-nermost coffin was rectangular, with sides and ends interlocking, and was sealed with lacquer. The lid had two double-headed bronze monster faces holding ring handles; each side had two single-headed ring handles; and the ends each had one

35 Hubei, vol. 1, 68. The graph is written with the semantic symbol for silk and the graph . He Linyi 1998, 562, notes that this is a simplified form of Fan , a name found on Chu seals.

36 For the description of the inner coffin, see Hubei, vol. 1, 61-68. It is not clear if the pupae were intentionally placed to represent metamorphosis like the traditional cicada décor on earlier bronzes, or if their existence in the tomb was accidental.

37 See discussion, chap. 3.

Figure 2. Signs on the Middle Coffin: End ViewInside the central chamber and surrounding the Inner Coffin, the Middle Coffin is tightly bound. This view depicts two disintegrated binds (three layers of rope) and the signs painted in white on the eastern end. After Hubei, vol. 1, fig. 42.

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single-headed handle. The inside of the coffin was painted with red lac-quer and the outside black with yellow and red lacquer phoenixes with gold and silver powder.

The lid and sides altogether had nine panels of abstracted and in-tertwined light and dark designs, each including four dragons and four phoenixes—the mythical beasts symbolic of spiritual flight. The ab-stracted phoenix and dragon designs on the eastern and western ends of the coffin represented guarded openings (see figure 3). The eastern end décor consisted of a large with diagonal paths or lines overlapped by a central or ya shape (somewhat reminiscent of the cosmic shi boards). The western end décor formed two concentric circles. In the outer circle six black dragons with sharp teeth and claws38 were incorporated into the décor. At the very center of the design at each end was an abstract taotie or monster mask looking straight out, its jawless mouth open, as if, like a snake, it were threatened and about to strike from its hole. This coffin was also tightly bound shut with a crisscross of rope.39

38 These dragons, like the monster masks, may have served an apotropaic function.39 For the description of the middle-inner coffin, see Hubei, vol. 1, 60-61.

Figure 3. Décor on the Eastern (left) and Western (right) Ends of the Inner Coffin

Detail: Dragon from the western end. After Hubei, vol. 1, figs. 45.b-c.

entering the earth 53

The décor on the Baoshan coffin-ends is similar in design to the brightly colored bases of carved wood used to support sculptures sym-bolizing transcendence and flight found in the Tianxingguan Tomb 2, dated to around 350-330 BCE. The base in figure 4a uses a red spiral-bird décor somewhat similar to the red spiral dragon décor on the west-ern end of the Baoshan inner coffin. Figures 4b and 4c are square bases designed in concentric circles like the western end, but 4c (following page) marks the diagonals or four paths like the eastern end. Figure 4b is plain with a ring, which may depict mountains. Both of these bases still retain their sculptures, a spirit tree with red stripes in 4b and a bi-furcated tomb guardian (zhenmushou) with hanging tongues and antlers

also with red stripes. These sculptures emerging out of the center of the diagonal and circular designs placed within the square support the idea of a spirit emerging. The notion that the spirit would emerge out of a ring or a mouth is confirmed by the translation of the entire base into a hybrid frog-bird beast with a gaping mouth (figure 5). Spirals of dragon bodies are painted all over the back. The toothed mouth of the base is tiger-like. We will see this theme of consumption repeated in a pig-dragon box depicted in figure 7 and discussed below with vessels from the eastern compartment.

Figure 4: A, B, C. Tianxingguan Tomb 2, Sculpture Bases and SculpturesFig. 4a is a base without any attached sculpture. Figure 4b is a spirit-tree sculpture and base; 4c is a zhenmushou or tomb-guardian sculpture and base. All examples have red and yellow décor over a black or brown background. After Hubeisheng Jingzhou bowuguan 2003, p. 192 (fig. 161), p.186 (fig. 156), p. 191 (fig. 160).

� 4a

4b �

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1.2. The Outer CoffinThe outer coffin40 consisted of compartments packed with the necessary implements Shao Tuo would need to make his journey. These implements were preserved in the one-and-a-half meters of water that had flooded the tomb over time. Under a layer of floating silk, feathers,41 and bubbles, the slightly acidic water appeared fairly clear when the tomb was opened. Except for the floating objects, everything seemed to be basically as origi-nally placed. Items were placed in the tomb either whole (such as vessels and weapons), folded (such as beds, stools, and tables), or in parts that symbolized the whole (such as the chariot pieces).

40 Descriptions of the outer coffin compartments are scattered throughout Hu-bei, vol. 1, 45-277. Chinese archaeologists prefer to discuss contents in terms of their type—bronze, pottery, etc. I have chosen to unpack each compartment separately as one would a giant suitcase, beginning with the top layer and moving downwards.

41 Identified as silver pheasant and chicken feathers, see Hubei, vol. 1, 448.

Figure 4c.

Figure 5. Tianxingguan Tomb 2, Frog-Bird BaseAfter Hubeisheng Jingzhou bowuguan 2003, foldout inset, fig. 163.

entering the earth 55

The eastern compartment was called the Dining Room (shishi ) in the Tomb Inventory Text,42 and included the feast preparations for the Great Sacred Plot (dazhao ), a reference to the underground shrine or tomb.43 The southern and western compartments held preparations for the journey (xing ).44 The southern compartment contained weap-ons and horse-and-chariot equipment, and the western chamber included items for daily use such as food and furniture. The contents of the north-ern chamber were associated with Shao Tuo’s identity and included deco-rative and protective items of a personal nature.45 Here the wandering aspect of Shao Tuo would pick up the items necessary to protect him on his journey and to establish his rightful place among his ancestors in the spirit world. Although no records exist to tell us the directions the spirit must travel first, in the transmitted “Zhaohun” song we know that spirits went clockwise from the east, to the south, west, north, and, finally, up into Heaven and down into Earth. We will examine the contents of each compartment that surrounded the central inner-coffin area (beneath the mound of Heaven and in the pit of Earth)46 in this order.

1.3. The Eastern CompartmentThe eastern compartment was set for a feast and, according to the Tomb Inventory Text (see Appendix Two), was the ritual repository of “Metal Vessels.” It also functioned as a “greeting room” or underground shrine (tiao < zhao ) for the ancestral spirits. The compartment contained wooden figures representing servants, musical instruments, bronze and lacquered wooden vessels (for stews, grains, meat and vegetable dishes, and alcoholic beverages), and baskets packed with foods. The dishes were spiced with ginger, scallions, combined fruits, nuts, and peppers with chicken, pork, water buffalo meat, and fish. They would have been served on low tables to the guests, who in this case were not Shao Tuo’s mourners but his ancestral spirits, his patrons and guides into the spirit world.47 The host of the feast would have been Shao Tuo himself, or the essence of his hunpo, which escaped the inner coffins.

42 See the Baoshan Tomb Inventory Text and notes, below, app. 2, strip 251.43 See strip 265.44 See strip 259.45 In Wu Hong’s analysis (Wu 1992, 135), the northern compartment was equivalent

to the “inner chamber” (qin “bedroom”) inside the “home” of the outer coffin.46 Lai 2003, 47, also points out the model of the round mound as Heaven and the

square pit as Earth.47 We know that ancestral spirits were the primary guests at feasts described in the

Shijing and on earlier bronze inscriptions.

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At the top of the eastern compartment floated a large variety of items used in the feast. In the center were two 112-millimeter-high wooden male servants with jointed arms, carved legs, and hair in long braids down the back (figure 6). They had painted-on hat straps and shoes in

black and lips painted in red. Their mustaches were fashioned out of wood chips. The faces, necks, and foot areas were pinkish. Since the head and neck were finely carved and the body area roughly carved, these figures were no doubt originally fully clothed. There were also two smaller wooden figures without carved legs, possibly representing female or young male servants. Two others were located in a deeper layer in the center section of the compartment. Three wooden tables, a wooden zither, and a case packed with wine cups floated at one end, and at the other was a large array of bamboo baskets for food. Between these and among the wooden servants floated a variety of lacquer “ear-cup” dishes (small oblong dishes with ear-shaped handles), covered pottery jars, and various implements such as whisk brooms, a bronze ladle, wooden cups, and a bamboo bag. Food and wine had been packed in a variety of large, rectangular, loosely-woven bamboo bas-kets, and sealed pottery jars placed beneath the table and inside a large bronze caldron. The majority of the bronzes seemed to be placed at the western side of the compartment. The eastern side consisted primarily of layer upon layer of food baskets.

The eastern compartment contained a large number of bronze sac-rificial vessels, including eighteen caldrons with four caldron hooks, a steamer, two square-lidded grain vessels (fu ), two spherical-lidded ves-sels (dui ), six drink-serving vessels (hu ), two lidded jars (fou ), two large basins (jian ), two shallow basins (pan ), two box-like contain-ers, a pouring vessel (yi ), a ladle, and an incense burner. Lacquered wooden vessels, tables, and implements (such as ladles) as well as bovine bones were also mixed in.

Figure 6. Baoshan Tomb AttendantAssembled out of separately carved pieces of wood. About 112 mm tall. After Hubei, vol. 1, fig. 170.

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Sets of dishes for drinking alcoholic drinks were packed into lacquer boxes designed to look like double-headed dragons. The Baoshan version (figure 7a), wrapped in a leather bag, was the same as one from Wangshan Tomb 2.48 A much more elaborate version is from Tianxingguan Tomb 2 (figures 7b, c). In this version the outward shape is clearly that of a pig, but painted-on décor shows the horned tiger mask of the taotie beast with interwined dragon bodies. On the cheeks of this hybrid animal are

48 Hubeishen wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 1996, 88, fig. 59.

Figure 7: A, B, C. Double-headed Pig-Dragon BoxesFigure 7a (above): top view of the Baoshan box, adapted from Hubei, vol. 1, fig. 82. Figures 7b and c: top and end views of the Tianxingguan box. Adapted from Hubeisheng Jingzhou bowuguan 2003, foldout inset, fig. 123.

7c �

� 7b

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painted small scenes of hunting and feasting, much as we might find on fifth century BCE bronzes.49 The frontal view of the animal (figure 7c) reveals an image of consumption (with the tongue hanging out within the round porcine nose) that is not unlike the taotie emerging through the jade ring at the end of the Baoshan coffin (see figure 3). It also re-veals that the hybrid horned pig-dragon shares the frog-like legs of the frog-bird base (figure 5) with the clawed tiger-like feet (compare figure 9). Both figures seem ready to pounce or take off—a theme consistent with the idea of their role as an intermediary to soul flight.50

In among the caldrons were three sets of bamboo strips detailing food items donated to the tomb, only some of which seem to correspond to actual items excavated.51 While the contents of the baskets and jars were not all identifiable or even full, the reported contents do give us an idea of what might have been served at a mortuary feast: water chestnuts, chestnuts, dates, red dates, pears, persimmons, ginger, lotus root, onions, and wild pepper seeds (possibly added for magical purposes rather than taste). Chickens and piglets in pieces were spread out among different baskets and were mixed with other fruits. There were also silk cloth and items, perhaps meant to imitate food, or to be used in serving, such as cogon grass, sticks, floss, and bamboo filaments. The baskets were tightly bound and some had clay seals and tags.52 The sealed jars were covered with cloths bound shut with coils of rope and clay seals. The contents seemed to be mostly herbal, consisting of sticks, leaves, and various (un-specified) plants. One had a carp skeleton, another 271 plums. Bones of a young water buffalo, mostly from the right side of the animal, were found dispersed among the caldrons.53

1.4. The Southern CompartmentThe southern compartment was filled with military equipment. Weap-ons included an array of dagger-axes, spears, double-bladed dagger-axes, poles, and arrows. Armor included wooden shields and a number of painted leather shields and body armor. Although an entire chariot with horses was not included, as in Western Zhou period tombs, there was equipment for a hunt. Horse and chariot equipment included painted

49 See Thote 1999b.50 For the historical role of alcohol in soul flight, see Cook 2005a, 16-27.51 Strips 251-58. 52 These seals and tags are not yet deciphered; see Hubei, vol. 1, table 16, 151-54.53 For a discussion of beef as an offering, see Ke [Cook] 2003b.

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leather armor (see figure 8)54 and décor, umbrellas, yokes, bamboo mats and screens, gauze, handles, along with innumerable bamboo or bronze

pieces, such as bird and tiger chariot décor, axle covers, horse bridle décor and bits, spike-covered wooden head pieces for horses, buttons, rings, pins, bone and wooden carved cowries, tent hooks, belt hooks, a net, a basket, and other sundries. There was a wooden drum and a bronze chime bell. One of the double-bladed dagger-axes was deco-rated with silver pheasant and crane feathers. Written on the left side of the horse armor were the names Zhou Gong

and Ying , perhaps the names of donors.55 A horse bit had the words “Heavenly Assistant” (tianxu ),56 sug-gesting the role of the horse in the spirit journey. Two wooden servants were also included. Bamboo strips listing items

donated to the tomb, but not necessarily all of them for this compart-ment,57 were found in two different sections of the chamber.

1.5. The Western CompartmentThe clothing, toiletries, and furniture Shao Tuo would need for his jour-ney were packed into the western chamber. These included weapons (a

Figure 8. Painted Leather Chariot Décor 35 x 40.4 cm. The décor of bifurcated dragons split by diagonals emerging out of a center ring is consistent with Chu décor on the east end of the Baoshan inner coffin and the décor on the sculpture bases (compare figs. 3 and 4). Adapted from Hubei, vol. 1, fig. 153.

54 Hubei, vol. 1, figs. 152, 153 show chariot armor composed of phoenixes on one and dragons on the other.

55 The name Zhou was originally written with the element; see Hubei, vol. 1, 222-23. Ying may have stood for a type of leather, see the Tomb Inventory text, strip no. 269.

56 Hubei, vol. 1, 243. For the reading of the second graph as xu, see He Linyi 1996, 528.

57 Strips 265-66 list sacrificial vessels for the Great Plot, and 267-77 describe horse and chariot décor. Most of the sacrificial vessels were found in the eastern compartment.

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leather shield, spears, spikes, dagger-axes), cloth coverings, shoes, a lac-quer toilet case (no contents), woven bamboo fans, tools (iron sickle, axe handle), bamboo mats, a reed screen, a folding bed, bronze lamps, bronze cooking and food storage vessels (a lidded caldron, a round bellied lidded jar, a teapot-like pouring vessel with a lid, and a lidded box), a lacquer painted handle (possibly for a feather fan), a zither, and two egg-shaped stones. Of the seven baskets, three had some remains. One had silk cloth, another had two pairs of hemp shoes, and the third was packed with a hat ornament, pepper seeds, and five wooden tags that said “chamber,” “stove,” “gateway,” “door,” and “walkway,” areas in his tomb-house that were controlled by spirits just as these same areas of his living residence were controlled.58 Bamboo strips with text were found in two places. One set of 129 strips was placed on top of two bronze basins, but these were all blank except for one, a piece that seems to have belonged to an administrative document.59 Another set of six strips consisted of tomb inventory records describing clothing and personal items.60

1.6. The Northern CompartmentThe contents of the northern chamber included items that Shao Tuo could identify from his life above ground. Included were protective orna-ments to be worn on his body and carried perhaps also for protection or to bribe spirits during his journey. Most important were the texts which identified him and his lineage as well as the merit he accumulated through service to the court and sacrifice to the spirits during his lifetime.

Objects included two wooden servants, a zither, two lidded bronze jars with handles, one with two handheld bronze lamps61 and the other with a bronze ladle inside, a bamboo mat, wooden pillows, a stool, fluted bone pins, a wooden tiger (figure 9), a dragon-headed staff with a long tongue (figure 10c), a writing brush, a paring knife, and a small box made of wood, bone, and bamboo with a vertical octagonal shaped wood and bone handle on the lid (no contents).

58 See the Divination Text and notes, app. 1. The deities of all areas except the stove were mentioned in the Divination Text. Han tombs included pottery stoves for cooking but earlier tombs simply included large cooking pots. No “stove” or kitchen area in these tombs can be specifically identified. For a discussion of the Five Sacri-fices, see Chard 1999 and Yang Hua 2004.

59 Strip 278.60 Strips 259-64.61 See Lai 2003, 101-26, for discussion of lamps in tombs and their use to light up

the dark northwest in the afterlife.

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Of the five baskets in this chamber, four had contents, and three of these (all painted red and black) were labeled. One brown basket held four wooden combs. Of the red and black baskets, one (labeled “Water Chestnuts”) simply held pepper seeds glued to the inside, and another (labeled “Feathered Turban Silk”) had silk, but the third (labeled “Pendant Basket”) contained a number of curious objects, possibly worn by Shao Tuo.62 These objects included a long jade strip and rectangular jade piece,

Figure 9. Shao Tuo’s Personal Tiger OrnamentAfter Hubei, vol. 1, fig. 171.

Figure 10: A, B, C. Shao Tuo’s Personal Ornaments and StaffFigure 10a (leftmost) depicts a head ornament of two intertwined hybrid tiger-snakes carved out of horn; after Hubei, vol. 1, fig. 174.2. Figure 10b depicts an ornament possibly also worn on the head with wild animals carved out of wood; after Hubei, vol. 1, fig. 174.3. Figure 10c (the last two, taken together) depicts the bronze head and foot of bamboo staff carried by Shao Tuo in the afterlife; after Hubei, vol. 1, fig. 129.2-3. The head, a horned dragon with teeth and a protruding tongue, is inlaid with gold and silver. The bamboo shaft was painted with black lacquer. The foot has a stylized griffin-like duck with wings outstretched ready to fly. This same duck is depicted in the Wangshan Tomb 2 screen (figure 16, below) catching snakes with its beak and feet.

62 For basket tags see Hubei, vol. 2, pl. 47, nos. 3, 4, 5. I follow Chen Wei’s reading of these basket tags as loanwords for ou , yupabo , and peisi (personal com-munication, 2/18/01). He notes that basket number 59 (not 218 with the tag) actually held the water chestnuts and that earlier readings as “water chestnuts” may be inaccu-rate. I would suggest that graph on tag 3 might be ao , a loan for jiao “pepper.”

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a fluted bone pin, a hairpiece (composed of fifteen intertwined bunches of hair woven at the ends with silk fibers and glued with lacquer), and peppers. Most interesting are the carved ornaments with possibly an apo-tropaic purpose: a carved horn of three long intertwined dragons which may have functioned as a head or hat ornament63 and a carved root with a deer looking back at a seated animal, possibly a monkey or a bear, on a base with two more deer, a bird, and several snakes (figure 10a). From holes drilled into the base of the root, one might guess that this object was also worn. The carved horn head ornament worn with a feathered turban would immediately transform Shao Tuo into the half-animal form of many spirits described in ancient texts (see the discussion in Chapter Five). The multi-animal ornament may have functioned like the small lac-quer screens of carved animals discovered in the tombs in Tianxingguan and in Tomb 1 of Wangshan, Jiangling (see figure 14)—a symbol of the wilds and of transformation (see Chapter Five)—or had a role in exor-cising demons, much like the animal costumes worn by shamans during the annual exorcism during the Han period.64

A round lacquer box, red on the inside and black on the outside, has around the outside a vividly rendered scene of the arrival of guests and the departure of one person in a chariot.65 On the lid is painted a finely rendered design in red, orange, yellow, light brown, and azure showing abstracted interlocking dragons and phoenixes in two concentric circles separated by a red band.66 Around the side above a decorative band are five scenes separated by trees outlined in red bands (see figure 11). This painting of guests arriving and a single man leaving may be symbolic of Shao Tuo’s departure (see Chapter Four).

Two texts were also placed into the northern compartment, one as-sociated with Shao Tuo’s public service as a Chu official67 and the other

63 Thote, in Yang Xiaoneng 1999, 338. Lai 2002, 92-93, suggests that this horn may have been worn on the xie cap mentioned in Chu Tomb Inventory texts and feels also that its function was apotropaic.

64 See Granet 1926, 299-320; Lewis 1990, 191-95. Lewis shows that mythical figure of Chi You was depicted in tombs with tiger or bear skin, horns, and weapons. This guise was also taken on by shamans in charge of funeral processions in later times. Chi You might have been a possible expression of the yu discussed above, although he does not seemed to be linked to consuming dead flesh.

65 See Hu Yali 1991, 502.66 See Cook and Major 1999, 42, fig. 3.11.67 Strips 1-176, including 35 blank strips. The blank strips may have strips pre-

pared for Shao Tuo to use during his lifetime. The text was unfinished when Shao died. Perhaps he was meant to finish them after death or simply have them on hand to show his good intentions.

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associated with his personal struggle against terminal illness.68 Because the latter text is concerned with the advance of death, it might be un-derstood as the first step towards the tomb, the portal to the celestial journey. It also gives details of the cosmic, earthly, and human forces that Shao Tuo probably understood as having impacted his vitality. He had to propitiate them during his lifetime and perhaps expected to meet them in the afterlife; hence he required the equipment to protect him and to appease them.

2. SACRED SPACE: THE INNER AND OUTER

In the first section of this chapter I surveyed the contents of Shao Tuo’s tomb and stated their general roles in the spirit journey. Here I discuss briefly the concept of sacred space in terms of both the symbolism of the tomb and the texts translated in the appendix.

By means of Shao Tuo’s Tomb Inventory text, the ritualists explained that the large sacrificial vessels (the “Metal Items,” jinqi ) were to be placed in the Great Ominous Region, or, Sacred Plot (dazhao ), a term that refers to burial grounds. Scholars have pointed out that the word for “Sacred Plot” (zhao ) was written variously and had the meanings of “presenting a large sacrifice for ancestral spirits” (tiao ) and that of a site where such a sacrifice was presented, as a greeting room for spirits (zhao or chao , or “temple” miao ).69 The bronze plan (tu )70 for a Zhongshan mausoleum (dating to the late third century BCE) refers to a walled compound of three tombs and associated temples as a zhao.71 In the Han-era edited ritual text Zhouli, the “Sacred Plot” is called the zhaoyu , and its design (tu), the responsibility of the “Officers of the Tumulus” (Zhongren ), involved divination. Besides the design, they were in charge of the building of the tomb, the divination for the burial, measuring the mound (qiufeng ), planting the correct number of trees on it, and counting up the tomb inventory. When it came to the

68 Strips 197-250, including 3 blank strips. Blank strips were most likely prepared before his death. Unused they were part of this sacred text involving the spirits and hence best entombed with the rest of the spirit naming (and as such spirit invoking) text. Such a text might be considered dangerous to the living. See app. 1.

69 Chen Wei 1996, 192-97. 70 A tu might only be for a state burial ground (bangmu zhi diyu ); see

Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 11, j. 41, 88.71 Hebeisheng wenwu yanjiusuo 1995, vol. 1, 398-402.

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burial itself, they controlled and performed in the ceremony “announc-ing the bell-fringed chariot and the ‘image man’ (yan luanche xiangren

),72 “weeping while holding an axe,”73 following the “inauspi-cious items” (the tomb inventory) into the tomb, magically securing the tomb path and the plot, sealing the entrance, and acting as the Corpse to receive the sacrifices to the deceased at the tomb.74

The link between burial, divination, and sacred space is represented by the word zhao and its cognates, all written with the phonetic represented by the graph . The primal meaning of zhao is omen, or oracle-sign cracks on a tortoise bone. The earliest reference to zhao as a burial space is recorded in the Zuozhuan narrative, probably compiled around the same time period as Shao Tuo’s burial although the purported time of the narrated action, according to the Zuozhuan compiler, belonged to the second year of the reign of the last Lu ruler, Ai Gong (r. 494-477 BCE), a time when Lu was at war with Chu. Interestingly, the same record uses the word zhao, “omen,” confirming that at least by the time of the Zuozhuan the two cognates existed as independent words. In the contemporary divination text from Xincai in southeastern Henan (ca. 340 BCE), we see the word zhao used in several senses: an omen, a type of jade gift, and a place. While the divination formulas in the Baoshan, Wangshan and Xincai texts are similar, the Xincai text has one phrase using the word zhao that is different. Where the Baoshan text might have “(the diviner) divined about it (saying): the long-term prognostication is auspicious (zhan zhi, heng zhenji [ ], ), the Xincai text has: “(The diviner) divined about it (saying): the omen (indicates the tomb occupant is) without blame (zhan zhi zhao wujiu ).” Here the word zhao was written, with the graphs and (bu), the latter being the

72 The commentaries to this section suggest that the xiangren must refer to the grass or wooden servants (yong ) put in tombs to serve the dead in the afterlife (Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 11, j. 4, 85-86). I suspect that the xiangren refers to an image or even the personator who wears the clothes of the dead, which attracted his wandering soul and thus acted as his xiang. Lai 2000, 138-39, suggests that it may have been a reference to the banner representing the transformation of the deceased into a spirit as seen in early Han tombs at Mawangdui in Changsha, Hunan. Another option might be that this person was the xiaoxiang , a ritualist who officiated at “greeting” ceremonies at the ancestral shrine (see above, chap. 2, n. 49).

73 The axe was probably used for spell making or other magic; see Lewis’s discus-sion of later festivals (Lewis 1991, 159, 202). Lai 2000, 76-85, 127-79, suggests that holding the axe may have represented the “cutting off ” of the living from the dead.

74 Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 11, j. 41, 80-87.

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most ancient word for an oracle-bone crack and “to divine.”75 The same graph is used to indicate a kind of jade ornament that is used to select auspicious days and is used as a gift to deities (written either zhaoyu

or yuzhao as in , …).76 In other cases, the meaning of this graph is not so clear. We see it

used as perhaps an omen to mark the results of prayer (dao ) during the sacrifice of large animals. In another fragment, we see it as repre-senting a process, a nominalized verb possibly referring to the diviner who cracked the bones to create omens: “..the one who divined, did so to speed the payment and prayers (to the deity for good influence) …(suo zhao zhe yi su saidao ...).”77 While the ancestral deities are often promised payment and prayer-sacrifices for their good influence (saidao), the speedy repayment to the deities for good influence occurs as a summation of “all” (jie ) prayer-sacrifices made to the ancestors.78 Jade as well as bone was used in divination, as we see in the Baoshan text where “Grand Unity (Taiyi ) sees a tiger-jade…(the diviner) took a

75 Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo comp. 2003, 180-84, 190, 206, 208, 211-12, 219, 220, 223 (lines Jia III.40, 47-48 Yi IV 23, 38; 100, 122 Ling 83, 100, 336, 341, 389, 487, 487, 497). In the Xincai text the words zhan and bu were also exchanged in the same formula (compare lines Ling 66-Jia III.234 and 241, Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 196). The Xincai text also has the phrase zhan zhi yue, heng Zhen ji (213, Ling 120). Interestingly, this divination text names a divination site, Dongling (“The Eastern Mound”), a possible reference to a burial ground and the surrounding village (209 Yi IV 149-50) Dongling is a site of sacrifice (218, Ling 308). The text also mentions ritualists and people from Western Mound (208 Yi IV 126; 216, Ling 228). Interestingly, it is the turtle divination method of a “Minister of the Mound” (lingyin

) that was chosen in Yi II 25, Ling 205, Yi III 48 and Yi II 27, 203.Note: Bamboo strip fragments are not in order, but are recorded according to the

group (zu ) of the batches or area (qu ) in which they were found. Three batches are mentioned: Jia , Yi , and Ling (random fragments). Groups (I-IV) of num-bered strips were found in proximity to one another (see Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo comp. 2003, 167-72, figs. 101-108).

76 Luo 2005, 90, interprets this as a “patterned jade.” However, divination using jade is another possibility. One divination method recorded on a Xincai fragment in-volved a perforated jade disc bi (Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 194 Jia III 181).

77 Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 209 Ling 12; 215 Ling 219. The word zhao also denotes a type of jade used in prayer to Chu mythical ancestors (see Henan-sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 202, Yi I 17; 203 Yi II 23, Ling 253; 205 Yi III 41; 206 Yi IV 43). There are several tantalizing cognate words using the same graph as pho-netic: tiao “to select” and “bore a hole” (as in a jade with a hole in it for string-ing?) or loans such as diao “to refine jade” that might be relevant to this problem but without more evidence it is difficult to demonstrate a phonetic loan.

78 See app. 1, I.2 (strips 199-200).

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jade disk and a tiger shaped jade, selected a good month and day and sent them (to Grand Unity). (He) moreover made a present of a strung jade disc and speedily presented it.”79 Jade was used to alleviate the curses from the nature gods Grand Unity and the Two Sons of Heaven (Er Tianzi

), as well as to repel (and expel) evil.80 The connotation of zhao in both senses (an action or the results of an action) is of communication with the spirits. This applies as well to zhao where it refers to both a sa-cred space and the deified presence of that sacred space. In the Xincai text, the graph has a semantic that indicates a place ( ) rather than the act of divination ( ): “(sacrifice to) Northern Zhao one (pig’s worth of) dried meat” ( ).” Like the deities of other northern sacred sites or of “Burial Hill” (sang qiu ) or Old Ruin (jiuxu ), this zhao or “sacred plot” likely had to do with death.81

In the Zhouli, we see that zhao was understood as a sanctified space for burial and tiao as the above-ground sanctified space for worship of the spirit tablets (of founder ancestors). Officers were assigned to main-taining the prohibitions for the “outer sacrifices” (waisi ) of the zhao

, “all of which have defined territories” (jie you yu )—areas ex-plained by the commentaries as tombs (yingyu ) with borders made of piled earth (fengtu ). The job of maintaining or keeping (shou ) the prohibitions (jinling ) includes the exorcism and the keeping away of pestilence demons (li ) during sacrifices. Other officers were assigned to maintain the shrine for the spirit tablets of founder ancestors (miao-tiao ) and store away from the site (zang ) their leftover shrouds that they make available during sacrifices for the Corpse Personator. This officer likewise must keep the shrine clear of pestilence and paint the shrine black (you ) and white (e ) in preparation for the worship and then store everything away afterwards.82

Chu tombs, with their central chambers surrounded by four stor-age chambers, accorded to the shape of the Four Regions diagram that

79 See app. 1, VI.1 (strips 218-19). Luo 2005, 90, notes that jade discs were attached by strings to sacrificial animals to satisfy the spirit.

80 Luo 2005, 90.81 Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 219 Ling 346. Other northern sacred

sites are sacrificed to as the possible sources of the patient’s illness, e.g. Northern Ancestral Shrine (223 Ling 476) or Northern Region (196 Jia III 239; 204 Yi II 30; 205 Yi III 40; 206 Yi IV 14, 26); for Burial Mound and the group of trees associated with it, see ibid. (198 Jia III 325-21); for Old Ruin and the father-spirit as-sociated with it, see ibid. (199 Jia III 350).

82 Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 11, j. 41, 68-75, on the “Dian si ” and “Shou tiao ” officers.

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Sarah Allan has shown was based on the shape of the tortoise plastron used in divination. The Xincai tomb is a ya-shape just like the large royal Shang tombs discovered in northern Henan province and dated to around 1200 BCE. The Jiangling tombs located to the west in Hubei have the four outer chambers built in a swirling pattern around the cen-tral chamber. These tombs are found in burial grounds outside of the metropolitan areas, often in hilly wild regions. While it is clear from the divination texts found in the Jiangling and Xincai tombs that the occu-pants belonged to an elite stratum of Chu society (the family names of the occupants were linked by marriage and the family names of the di-viners involved also overlapped), slight differences in the tomb contents and design suggest that the tomb builders followed regional customs. The Xincai tomb was heavily plundered and items smashed, but we can tell from the remains that, like the Baoshan tomb, the dining room was to the east, and the armory to the south. Unlike the Baoshan tomb, the divination text was found in the armory and not in the northern cham-ber (which was emptied by plunderers). Also unlike the Baoshan tomb, the armory contained a chariot and the western chamber included eight bodies. One, a 35-40 year old male, may have in fact been the tomb oc-cupant who was thrown aside during the earliest raids of the tomb (pos-sibly in the Han dynasty). The other seven were females around the age of 20, who, judging from the malformation of one of their skulls from a tight band, were possibly servants.83

The Chu-influenced tomb of Zeng Hou Yi, dated to about 100 years earlier than the Xincai tomb84 and located in northern Hubei, up to now has been the latest tomb with large numbers of human victims (also mostly young women, probably food servants and musicians). The Jiangling tombs did not contain human victims. The attendants in the Baoshan tomb were made of wood. The Xincai tomb also contained twenty-five tiny male and female servants roughly carved out of white stone, but these were found at the bottom of the inner coffin chamber of the Xincai tomb, not in the chambers equipped for the deceased’s travel. Despite regional differences, from the general design and con-tents of Chu tombs we can understand that they had two primary func-tions: (1) the tranquilization of the potentially harmful earthly soul or corporal essence and (2) the preparation of the spirit for flight. The lay-

83 Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 38-46. 84 Li Xueqin 2004 confirms a much-discussed earlier idea that Pingye Jun Cheng

died in 377 BCE at the end of Chu King Dao’s reign.

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ers of inner coffins were tightly bound and sealed within an outer cof-fin by layers of multicolored clay forming a tumulus or mound above the tomb chamber. The chambers of the outer coffin were packed with items for the entertainment of the deceased and his spiritual guests, for the hunt, for travel, and for the deceased spirit to recognize and carry on his person when he departed. Although the inner and outer coffins were tightly sealed, symbolic apertures and chariot pieces represented the journey of the spirit.

The notion of an inner sanctified walled-in space clearly existed since the early Zhou period with the walled center in the midst of the Four Regions.85 By the late-Warring States to early-Han period, this old pat-tern was translated into a utopian vision of a perfect government as the division of space into bureaucratic legalistic cells divided into inner and outer layers according to a Five Phases scheme, with the four seasons interlocking around an inner core bifurcated into a Yin-Yang pattern of Heaven and Earth.86 In either the Four Regions or the Five Phases system, the Inner represented the political center. In the earlier Zhou system, the political center was coterminous with the religious center (the location of the main temple, the zong ). By the time of the fourth century BCE, there were many religious centers, what the Zhouli might refer to as “Out-side Ancestral Temples” (waizong ), referring to centers of ancestor worship outside of the governing lineage. In a local scheme, the outer temples would refer to the ancestors of a person’s in-laws in contrast to one’s own, just as outer ghosts referred to their ancestral spirits.

For the Zhou, the word for “inner” (nei) represented not a location so much as a process—an entering and a bringing in of tribute (ru and na were cognate words whose graphs were used interchangeably with nei up through the Warring States period) and people from the re-gions outside the center. The court (ting ) or shrine hall (gong ) in which the king held his official ceremonies was officiated by an “Inner Archivist” (neishi ),87 an archivist of the records of lineage merit. The archivist and other officials “went in and out” of the space which

85 See my discussion in Ke 2003a.86 This is most clearly laid out in the Zhouli text; see Ueyama 1981; Peng Lin 1990.

Wang Aihe suggests that the bifurcated core, and indeed the entire shift from the stable Four Regions pattern to the whirling Five Phases pattern, symbolized the po-litical disunity after the fall of the Zhou (A. Wang 2000).

87 The graphs and were used interchangeably during the Western Zhou pe-riod. Hence a shi (archivist) was one who served.

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the king symbolically occupied as the central omphalos through which he communicated with the spirits who traveled “up and down.” 88 While the Zhou king’s control over access to the spirits moved with him as he traveled from one sacred space to another, the king in the Zhouli was a Daoist paragon of non-action (wuwei ) encased in the concentric folds of an unmoving center representing the Inner—his kingdom, his palace, his chambers, and the Repository of Heaven (tianfu ). The Zhouli king relied on a neishi as well as a waishi to negotiate the en-tering and exiting of the many layers of Inner and Outer.

In the Chu divination manuscripts, the business of serving the king is called “churu shi .” Originally for the Zhou, the terms most likely referred to the bringing of gifts in and out of a sacred space in which the king officiated over the sacrificial feast for Zhou ancestors; by the time of the Zuozhuan chronicle, the record for 630 BCE (Xi year 28) denotes churu as an act of obeisance on the part of the subordinate gift recipient. The recipient went out of and back in the king’s space three times after his acceptance of the bamboo record of his merit (ceming ) and ac-companying gifts.89 Also in the Zuozhuan, “going out and in” referred to visits by envoys of one state (e.g., Chu) to another (e.g., Jin, a state to the north of Chu).90 By the fourth century BCE, it was an idiom refer-ring to an official carrying out the king’s business. This was Shao Tuo’s job and the crossing of boundaries involved some danger. Indeed, third century BCE “Day Books” (texts which govern daily activities according to a Yin-Yang Five Phases scheme) give instructions on passing through gates, such as those of a city or nation. One was required to perform the “Pace of Yu” (an exorcist dance) three times for a safe passage.91

The inner and outer dimensions as defined for the king’s sacred space were duplicated on a smaller scale for members of the elite. For the Chu elite, there were three layers, the person (gongshen ), the rooms of the residence (gongshi ), and the outside (wai) where business or court

88 See in general the work of K. C. Chang, Wu Hong, Liu Yu, Robert Eno, Sarah Allan, and Wang Aihe.

89 Merit in this case was the defeat of Chu by Jin ruler Chong’er. For a discussion of why ceming refers to records of lineage merit rather than to documents of feudal investiture, see Cook 1997.

90 Zuozhuan, Cheng 13, in Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 235.91 Harper 1985, 469; Harper 1998,168-69; Hu Wenhui 1998. For a discussion of

possible Zhou links to the Pace of Yu and to the process of sanctification in Zhou ritual and its preservation by Mohists, see Cook 2003a, 2005b.

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service (shi) took place.92 When sacrifices to the earth gods of the inside and the outside spaces were made, the inside space was called “the resi-dence” (gong) and the outside space was referred to as “the wilds” (ye). The inside space consisted of both residence rooms (gongshi) and residence walkways (gongxing ). To cure the patient of illness, the inside space had to be cleared of malign spirits all the way to the gate. To exorcise the demons from the space closest to the patient, his bedroom, the ritualists first sacrificed to the Earth God of the Residence, then moved outward to the spirits of the walkway up to the Great Gate (damen ).93

The concepts of Inner and Outer also applied to family relations. Ghosts from the wife’s family were “outside” ghosts.94 From the divina-tion text in Shao Tuo’s tomb, we see that ancestral spirits of his father’s line were sacrificed to as a group, and that sometimes the spirit of his mother was sacrificed to at the same time as his father and his ancestors. But one spirit, the lian’ao (> ) of Dongling, was always sacrificed to outside the city wall, as were male relatives who had died prema-turely or without descendants. These spirits were considered outside the patrilineal descent line.95 In an elite mortuary ritual recorded in the Zuozhuan for 561 BCE, the relatives from a descent line (xing ) dif-ferent from the deceased had to worship “outside,” whereas those of the same descent line worshipped inside the ancestral shrine (zongmiao

).96 If the lian’ao of Dongling was worshipped outside the (city or temple) wall because of his different lineage name, then the Chu clearly obeyed a set of social rules similar to those of the Central Plains Chinese that were anecdotally recorded in the Zuozhuan.

92 The term neiwai occurs in a Xincai text fragment in the context of a divination prayer, but the fragment is so small not much else can be understood (Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 188 Jia II 40).

93 See Baoshan strips 199-200, 201-04, 207-08, 209-11, 212-15, 228-29, 232-3 in the appendices, below. The words da “big” and tai “great” were used interchangeably at this time. The Earth Altar may have been just inside the main gate. Yang Hua 2004 discusses these sacrifices in terms of the performance of the Five Sacrifices.

94 The Xincai text has a fragment suggesting the danger to the tomb occupant of someone who while “traveling, had an outside death” (… , …); Henan-sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 207, Yi IV 52. The full implications of this are obscured by the fragmentary nature of the text, but it is clear that it was not an aus-picious event. The tomb occupant himself seemed to die of a severe illness or fatal injury that affected his upper torso, specifically his back, shoulder, armpit, “heart,” bones, and skin with the primary symptoms seeming to be swelling and itching.

95 See Baoshan strips 209-11, 225, 227, 243 in the appendices, below.96 Zuozhuan, Xiang 12 Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 275-76; Legge, 454-55.

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For the Chu elite, the innermost layer of both the Inner and the Outer (or, Wild) was probably the body, an internalization of political geography.97 The concept of “entering,” with the ancient resonance of gift-giving and sacrifice, persisted in the term for “eating” or “to bring in food” (rushi ).98 There was no pre-Qin graphic distinction between the words “inside” and “to enter” now distinguished as nei and ru. War-ring States-period examples use the graph for ru to represent the words nei “inner” and na “to bring in (gifts).”99

In the divination texts, the “body” (gongshen, or shen) was listed, along with the residence as a primary site for exorcist ritual to take place. These inner concerns contrast with Shao Tuo’s “outside affairs,” which were also a topic of divination. Descriptions by the ritualists of people’s afflic-tions give us some sense of the inner and outer delimitation of the body. In strip no. 58 of the Wangshan text, for example, the self of the patient who was suffering some sort of paralysis was divided into “body and skin” (shenpi ) and “thought” (si ), representing the personal Outer and Inner: “(Shao Gu) already has abscesses, causing his heart to flutter to the point that he can not move his mind or his body and skin... .”100 His body and skin represented the outside, and the site of thinking, or mind (si), represented the inside. The inside was further defined as the “heart and abdomen” (xinfu )101 and was associated with the intake of food and the elimination of waste (bian ). Shao Gu could not eat and had diarrhea.102 Specific areas of pain were determined to be his “chest and upper torso” (xiongxie )103 and his “feet and bones” (zugu

).104 These afflictions were caused by unhappy ghosts and spirits that he somehow offended, thus incurring “blame” (jiu ). Besides satisfying these spirits with food sacrifices and bribing them with jade gifts,105 ritu-

97 See discussion in Lo 2000, 24, 40.98 The word shi by itself can also mean “to eat”; see Wangshan no. 106.99 He Linyi 1998, 1379.100 See Wangshang Shang no. 58, Zhu et al., 1996, 238 (notes p. 256, no. 13), and

the appendices. Liu Xinfang 1998, 37, reads “he can not move, his whole body is ex-hausted.”

101 See Wangshang Shang nos. 10-12, and the appendices.102 See Liu Xinfang 1998, 37.103 The upper torso in the Xincai text was referred to as ying (Henansheng wen-

wu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 195, Jia III 219).104 For the chest and upper torso, see Wangshan Shang nos. 10, 12, Zhu et al. 1996,

nos. 37, 51-52 and the appendices. For feet and bones, see Wangshan strip Shang nos. 107-08, Zhu et al. 1996, nos. 38, 39, 41, 42.

105 It is clear from the Xin Cai divination text that jade was also used to repel the

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alists had to expel (chu ) demons from the patient’s internal and exter-nal spaces and “beat and release” (gongjie) the demons caught in them.106 The inside space of the body—like the home, the temple, or the walled governmental center within the Four Regions—was a space that needed to be ritually cleansed. By the Han period the inner spaces of the body were viewed as a Yin-Yang Five Phases cosmogram.107 In Shao Gu and Shao Tuo’s time, the body, like the tomb, was likely viewed as the center of the Four Regions cosmogram.

The method for cleaning the internal space of the body was the Pu-rification ritual. In the Wangshan divination manuscript (translated in Appendix Three), this ritual is divided into an Inner Purification ritual (neizhai ) and an Outer (or Wild) Purification ritual (yezhai ). It seems likely that the Outer Purification ritual, like the Outer Earth God, concerned purification before worship in the Wild or at the shrine in the family burial ground outside the walls of the city. Unfortunately the Wangshan manuscript is too fragmentary to get a clear sense of the context for the Outer Purification ritual and where it may have taken place. By the Han period, the Purification ritual was a cleansing ritual performed by the supplicant involving a special diet, meditation, and bathing in grain-infused waters in preparation for sacrifice. The inside and outside then referred to the inside and outside of the body, the xin and shen.108 Although there are few details in early texts on this ancient rite, there are some hints that this ritual may have been multilayered, with Inner and Outer not only referring to the body but also Inner and Outer temples.109

From the Wangshan fragments, we know that the Inner and Outer Purification rites were performed as part of a ceremonial process to remove “spiritual blame” (jiu) and that the diviners divined in order to

curses of ancestral deities, founder deities, and astral gods; see Luo Xinyi 2005.106 Li Ling 2000, 292; Harper 1998, 169.107 Lo 2000, 15-16, notes that the early doctor Chunyu Yi (fl. 154 BCE) was con-

cerned with the invasion of Yin into the Yang spaces of Inner and Outer and the Five Phase cosmogram.

108 Zhu et al. 1996, 267, n. 81, suggests that Inner referred to the residence and Wild referred to outside the city walls.

109 Chu performance of the Purification ritual (Baoshan nos. 212-15, 218-19) is recorded in the Zuozhuan tale of King Ling asking the nature spirits which he first bribed with jade to choose his successor among five sons. The sons perform the Pu-rification ritual before they enter the ancestral shrine to worship (Zuozhuan, Zhao 13, in Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 382; Legge, 650).

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obtain the auspicious days to perform it.110 Both rituals seem to be one of a series performed in the process of exorcising spiritual blame, and were possibly associated with rituals to the earth god performed inside the residence and outside in a burial ground. For example, the Inner Pu-rification was either performed after gifts of jade to the Grand King of the East111 or after the completion of other sacrifices, such as the zhai or tuo 112 possibly having something to do with words written with the same graphic element, such as the earth god or the royal burial ground (zhun ), settled administrative regions mentioned in the Baoshan text as associated with Chu Kings Xuan, Wei, and Su.113 In the Xincai text also, the Inner Purification ritual was performed as part of a series of rituals, with the one recorded just previous as a prayer-sacrifice to the Chu founders and to the Five Mountains. This follows immediately after an “opening” ritual pi , most likely a ritual for exorcising baleful influ-ences perceived as occupying a particular space.114

There seem to be few early references to the Purification ritual.115 The word was represented also by the graph (qi, “balance, unify”)

110 The Wild Purification ritual was performed on days associated with the element metal and the Inner Purification rite was performed on days associated with wood, earth, and metal. Wangshan Shang no. 72, Zhu et al. 1996, no. 156 and appendices. Shang Chengzuo strips, nos. 28, 66, 70, 71 (ibid., nos. 155, 132, 106, 137). For wuxing correlations, I follow A. Wang 2000.

111 Zhu et al. 1996, strip no. 106, and app.112 Zhu et al. 1996, 273, n. 106, read this as a type of sacrifice but give no details.

It may be a poorly written ji found in strip 71 and elsewhere in the Wangshan and in the Baoshan manuscript. It referred to the completion of a sacrificial cycle; see Baoshan strips 201-04 and the back of 202. He Linyi 1998, 105, 524, suggests the graph can be read as yi , defined in the Erya, “Shi Tian,” as “a secondary sacrifice” (youji ). Both the words di and zhun were originally written with the phonetic ele-ment tuo, possible a variation of tu “earth” or du “measurement (of land).” The same graph is used as a unit of measurement on the Zhongshan mausoleum plate with the Zhaoyutu, the map of the Sacred Plot for the burial of Zhongshan royalty. Although the suggested reading is chi, I suspect du was intended but perhaps only as a loan for chi. The word du and zhai are loan graphs for the word “to live” possibly pronounced *dagh or *drak (Li Fanggui reconstructions found in Schussler 1987, 135, 811). Li Fanggui reconstructed the word chi as *thjiak (77) and yi as *rak ( 741).

113 See Baoshan strips 58, 166, 172, 174, 177, 191.114 Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 192, Jia III 134 & 108. Oddly, the

record of days for each ritual is in order for the first two rituals (day 11 and day 12), but Inner Purification, which is third on this fragment, goes back to “the evening of Gengwu” which would be day 7, either a mistake or almost an entire 60-day ritual cycle later.

115 For a study of a possible late Western Zhou reference to the purification ritual performed as part of the annual sacrifice to ancestral spirits and recorded on a re-

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and later (ji, “measure, a measure”) and had itself both an inner and outer aspect. Outwardly, the word could refer to a process of purifying grain wines ranging from unstrained cloudy wines of different aromas to clarified alcohol beverages. The process of balancing different types of wine with the requirements of different sacrifices represented a bal-ance of forces116 and, by extension, a measured amount or quality. As a representation of an inner attitude, it came to represent an inner balance of forces or thoughts before prayer. We see the word in prayers to the goddess, the legendary Wen Wang Mu, that is, the mother of the Zhou founder King Wen. One example, using the related graph read qi, is re-corded in Shijing ode “Si qi” (Mao no. 240), and another example, using the graph read zhai, is recorded on a pair of bronze inscriptions made by a Lord of the southern state of Cai for his daughter in mar-riage in 524 BCE to the King of Wu.117 In the ode “Si qi,” qi is read as zhai and is used to describe the attitude of Wen Wang’s mother towards the Zhou ancestors. It was this model behavior that King Cai’s daughter was exhorted to follow when she used the ablution vessels in prayer. The inscriptions of the basin (pan ) and vase (zun ) instruct: “to present clarified wine mortuary offerings” (yinxiang ) and “in prayer at the numinous Tasting and Ancestral Tablet sacrifices” (qi ming changdi

) in order “to receive the divine aid without end” (youshou wuyi ). Most readings of the Shijing poem switch the subject of “Siqi”

from King Wen’s Mother to King Wen after the first verse.118 It seems likely that the entire poem describes the ritual behavior of King Wen’s Mother while worshipping in the Respected Elders of the Ancestral Hall (zong gong).

The extended meaning of the word zhai as “pure” or “clean” likely evolved from the use of alcohol for purification in exorcism rituals in the form of a pre-sacrifice libation ritual, or even as a drink for the spirits (and feast participants) during a sacrifice. Like the word zhai, the word yin , used in the Cai inscription to represent clarified wine, came

cently discovered bronze inscription, see Cook 2004 and Ke 2003a.116 The idea of qi as “balance” is seen in the “Yangsheng fang” text from Mawang-

dui, no. 91, where the Yang and Yin vapors of men and women are conjoined; see Harper 1998, 358, n. 5.

117 Scholars interpret siqi as sizhai, which they read as “extremely reverent.” See Qu Wanli 1977, 212-13; Ma et al., nos. 587, 589. The word si written or was used before and after adjectives or stative verbs in poetry.

118 Qu Wanli 1977, 212-13; Waley 1996, 235-36.

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to mean pure and clean. Both words (yin and zhai) were used together in an inscription by the Prime Minister (xiangbang ) of the northeastern state of Zhongshan in 307 BCE. Both yin and zhai were written with the “wine” semantic (you), suggesting that for the Zhongshan people both words were associated with wine or wine vessels.119 The two words may have represented two contrasting types of wines, zhai being a muddy sweet wine in contrast to yin a refined clear wine. Another, more likely, possibility is that zhai should be read as ji, a measurement or vessel used as a measure for doling out the proper balance of aromatic wines accord-ing to the requirements of a particular sacrifice. According to the Zhouli, it was the duty of the Wine Corrector (jiuzheng ) to regulate the level of wine purification accorded to the sacrifice: a ji meaning a balance of aromas could also by extension be a ji, a dose or measured amount of wine or medicine.120 The Zhongshan Prime Minister cast a square wine vessel (fanghu ) “to measure out the amount of clarified wine and to be upheld as standard when presenting a feast to the High God and in annual rituals to the Former Kings.”

The association of ji or zhai with measured amounts of wine or medi-cine may explain the practice of zhaijie ( ), a cleansing of the heart and body through a restricted diet before worship.121 Purification of the inside may have been through a restricted diet or perhaps the inges-tion of wine that was used by Han times to wash down medicine.122 It may also have involved the cultivation of a particular frame of mind—a meditation involving the visualization of the spirits, as described in the Liji “Jiyi” chapter, which divides the practice of ji into a focused mind Inside and a dispersed (demeanor) Outside.123 The Inside or In-ner Purification ritual lasted three days, after which the supplicant was

119 Later texts suggest that yin may also have referred to purification by smoke or cooking. See the Zheng Xuan commentary to Zhouli, “Da Zong Bo” , in Zhou-li zhengyi, sect. 9, j. 33, 38. For translation of the Zhongshan inscriptions, see Cook 1980; Mattos 1997, 104-11. For the tomb report and copies of the inscription, see Hebeisheng wenwu yanjiusuo, 1995, vol. 1.

120 Zhouli “Tianguan, Jiu zheng.” See the discussion by Sun Yirang on the types of wine and the meaning of “the five ji”; Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 3, j. 9, 48-51. In the same section of the text which deals with the regulation of medicines, ji refers to jiliang, a balanced dose which involved the balance of taste and season, see p. 33. This use is also found in “Wushierbingfang” from Mawangdui, see no. 206 in Ma Jixing 1992, 617.

121 Wang Li 2000, 1781. The Liji records the practice of jijie before reporting or serv-ing the spirits, juan 1 “Quli” and “Biaoji” (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 1, 1.9b, sect. 2, 17.1b).

122 Ma Jixing 1992, 326.123 “Zhi ji yu nei, san ji yu wai , ”; Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 24, 14.5a-b, 6a.

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able to “visualize the one for whom he had purified himself ” (ji san ri nai jian qi suowei ji zhe ). The Outside or Outer Purification ritual lasted seven days and involved a restricted diet, bath-ing (or at least cleaning the exposed parts of the body such as the hands and face) in grain waters, and sleeping in an Outer bedroom (waiqin

).124 This purification process may have come directly from the use of wine in cleaning and libation, rituals for ancestral spirits that may have descended from those of the Shang period.125

Although there is no mention in the Baoshan or Wangshan divina-tion texts of bathing or any ritual involving cleansing the patient’s body, it seems likely that the Chu zhai involved the presentation of fragrant liquids for libation and ablution in zun- and pan-style vessels and perhaps the use of them in some sort of religious service to the spirits at altars inside the residential compound and outside in the family burial ground. Since the legend of King Wen’s Mother predates the Wangshan text, it is further likely that the purification process involved many layers of in-ner and outer cleaning.

I now turn to a deeper analysis of the divination text that describes efforts to stop the progress of Shao Tuo’s illness towards death, and also an analysis of the lacquer painting depicting the departure of a lone man in a chariot whom I understand as a metaphor for Shao Tuo (see figure 12, Chapter Four). The divination text reveals the spiritual topography that haunted Shao Tuo’s daily life and could cause illness. It also provides a glimpse at the ritualists’ incipient awareness of the Yin-Yang Five Phases cosmological scheme that would dominate magical thinking less than a hundred years later. While the divination text provides a gateway into the

124 Liji, “Yucao” (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 14, 9.2b-3a-b).125 Chen Peifen 1981, 15, suggests that the you ritual, performed for 59 days to dif-

ferent ancestral spirits, may have been a ritual involving consecrating the ground with wine (lei ); Wang Li 2000, 1494. Li Xueqin 2001, 67-69, understands it as a type of prayer service. On the other hand, Liu Yu suggests that the graph read you was used for yi (later written as or ) referring to a secondary sacrifice and not necessarily associated with wine. Li Ling identified the yi rituals recorded in the Baoshan divi-nation text. They were performed in the summer and spring on days to a series of ancestral spirits later associated with wood, water, or metal and involved the sacri-fice of water buffalo and pigs to the ancestors of the patient. The sacrificial animals were variously prepared as food offerings, with wine, or as a soup. It is possible that there was a sensitivity to Yin and Yang balance in the choice of season, day, and pre-sentation style. In any case, the Baoshan yi does not seem to involve pouring wine on the ground. (Liu Yu 1989, 500; Li Ling 2000, 286; also see below, notes to app. 1, strips 197-98).

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mentality of Shao Tuo and his contemporaries, the painting provides a rare glimpse at the people themselves.

CHAPTER FOUR

SHAO TUO’S DEPARTURE

I set off at morning from the Ford of Heaven;At evening I came to the world’s western end.Phoenixes followed me, bearing up my pennants,Soaring high aloft with majestic wing-beats.“See, I have come to the Desert of Moving Sands!”Warily I drove along the banks of the Red Water,Then, beckoning the water-dragons to make a

bridge for me,I summoned the god of the west to take me over.

“Li Sao,” D. Hawkes, trans.1

Shao Tuo’s journey into death began when cursing spirits interfered with his vital breath. The conception that misfortunes in life were directly connected to spirits is known from divination texts dating as early as the Shang period (1200-1045 BCE). We know from the Shang oracle bones that difficulties encountered in daily life—no matter whether a toothache, a poor harvest, or an invasion by barbarians—were viewed as omens of displeasure in the spirit world. The world—its Center, Four Regions, Above and Below—was filled with ancestral and natural powers.2 We can see from transmitted and excavated Warring States-period texts that by the fourth century BCE these omens were interpreted according to more complex and multi-layered belief structures—ones influenced by budding cosmological schemes that shifted the weight of moral author-ity away from a single center (and worship of the lineage of royal ances-tors) towards an abstract heaven filled with the forces of generation and

1 Hawkes, 1985, 78. Before the persona ascends to Heaven, he catches a last glimpse of his old home, causing his chariot to falter. The sense is that he continues sans chariot to join the shaman ancestor, Peng Xian.

2 See Allan 1991 and Keightley 2000 for details of the Shang physical, mental, and mythical environments. For an example of the exorcism of a curse, see Heji 6057 zheng (in Yao and Xiao 1989, vol. 1, 152 xia). Exorcisms of curses were often performed in association with hunting, see Li Xiaoding 1974, vol. 2, 589.

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destruction.3 Even so, we can see in the case of Shao Tuo the reflection of the Shang beliefs upon the religious landscape of later times.

Like the famous shamanic poet Qu Yuan, Shao Tuo suffered in the court of the unappreciative Chu King Huai (r. 328-299 BCE). Tuo, as he was often referred to by his diviners, suffered three years of spiritual blame (jiu ) and died in the end without his team of ritualists discover-ing the “province” (zhou ), that is, the location, of the ghost or spirit and source of the curse (sui ). The method for removing curses in the fourth century BCE in some ways had not changed much since the Shang period. In Shang divination records, ancestral anger was appeased with sacrifices of domestic animals and slaves. In the fourth century BCE, ritualists sacrificed domestic animals (no longer humans at this time) and gifts of jade and clothing. Ritualists in both times performed individual purification or exorcism rituals as well as adhering to annual ritual cycles of purification and sacrifice. During the Shang, the source of the curses was sought from among a hierarchy of thirty-one male and twenty female ancestral spirits, spirits whose needs were attended to every ten days in a series of five different sacrifices.4 In the fourth-century text, the source of the curse might equally be a god representing a cosmic force, a local nature god, an unhappy ghost, or an ancestor from the interconnected lineages of Tuo and of the Chu state.

During the Shang period, it was ancestral spirits that cast “blame” (jiu) upon a member of the royal clan. Divinations were then made to deter-mine when that person was at last in a state of “being without blame” (wu jiu ).5 By the time of the Warring States period, when the Zuo-zhuan chronicle of the Spring and Autumn period (770-475 BCE) was written, people could still sicken and die from being in a state of blame, but this state was often attributed to actions that offended Confucian morals,6 where blame was cast by the entire people of a nation,7 or the more abstract social rules associated with later Confucianism. Some ex-amples combine Confucian ethos with blame by ancestral spirits and

3 For a discussion of the shift in schemes from Four Regions (sifang) to Five Phas-es (wuxing), see A. Wang 2000.

4 See Chang Yuzhi 1987 for details. These Five Sacrifices are different from the household cults, also termed Five Sacrifices, practiced in the Warring States period and later (see Chard 1999).

5 See Guo and Hu 1978-82, 6032 zheng; and other examples in Yao and Xiao 1989, vol. 1, 326.

6 See Zuozhuan, Zhuang 21, in Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 66. 7 Zuozhuan, Xi 22; Xiang 3, 21, in Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 119, 255, 294.

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ghosts.8 Even so, divination by either tortoise shell or stalks was neces-sary to determine the state of blame and its outcome.9

The connection between spiritual blame and illness is evident on a pair of late fourth-century BCE jade tablets from the northwestern state of Qin (which was located in the old Zhou territory). These tablets are similar in concern to Shao Tuo’s divination text, but the part they played in sacrifices was different. Their context concerns King Hui Wen of Qin (337-311 BCE), who had them inscribed with a prayer to Hua Mountain towards the end of his life.10 He was suffering from an incurable illness and was afraid he had incurred spiritual blame for having “wiped out the Zhou hereditary house and dispersed the statutes of (Zhou) law.”11 By ending Zhou access to the places (fang, literally “regions”) for sacrifice, the spirits of the “mountains and rivers” and of the “foremost ances-tors of the Five Rites” would not receive the necessary pig sacrifices and jade and silk gifts. King Hui Wen claimed, however, that because of his adoption of an eastern peoples’ law he was blameless.12 Using jade offerings, he announced this to the Great Mountain of Hua and asked that his body, afflicted from the abdomen down to his feet, be restored to health. He then sacrificed rams, a four-horse road chariot, and six hu-mans—three at the Yin and three at the Yang side of the mountain. He promised continued sacrifices once his health was restored.

From the Xincai divination text fragments, we know that spiritual blame and curses can occur separately. The patient may be cleared of blame but not of a curse, or cleared of both. The diviners tested for both

8 Zuozhuan, Xiang 4, in Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 257, where a child bride was given an inadequate funeral; Zhao 15, where the di ceremony to the ancestral spir-its was poorly performed. In the latter case, evil halos appeared as an omen of the spirits’ displeasure; Xiang 51, where a man claimed that even though he would die because of someone else’s offense (hence become an unhappy ghost), he would not cast spiritual blame upon that person (suggesting a higher Confucian ethic that could supersede the power of the human spirits).

9 Zuozhuan, Wen 18, where a patient’s illness and ultimate death were determined by tortoise shell divination; Xiang 9, where a woman who offended Confucian sexual codes claimed no matter how the stalks and Yi manual decided her fate, she would die (suggesting again these social rules superseded the power of human spirits). See Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 174, 267.

10 Deciphered by Li Ling 1999 and Li Xueqin 2000.11 The Qin annexation of the symbolic Zhou house, residing in Chengzhou and

protected by one neighboring state or another since 771 BC, is recorded in the “Zhou benji” of the Shiji (Takigawa 4.85).

12 This is an obscure reference to his murdering Shang Yang, a Wei lord who original-ly brought him a copy of the six-chapter legal code of Wei; see Li Xueqin 2000, 50.

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among an array of ancestral and nature spirits. In Baoshan and Xincai texts, recently deceased ancestors, the most likely cause of blame, received numerous sacrifices. The spirits most likely to be the source of curses seem to have been the astral god Grand Unity (Taiyi), the Controller of Fate (Siming), the three Chu founder gods (Laotong, Zhurong, and Xue Xiong), Chu King Shao, as well as one’s more recently deceased ances-tors. Since the occupant of the Xincai tomb, Pingye Jun Cheng (d. 377 BCE), apparently traveled quite a bit, curses were also found to be caused by the spirits of large rivers.13

Shao Tuo’s spiritual blame likely occurred through his administrative duties to the Chu king. He often had to try criminal cases and may have been responsible for the capital punishment of innocent victims. As a minister of state, he, like the King of Qin, was concerned with wiping out blame for human death. His job, like Pingye Jun Cheng’s, probably involved a great deal of travel, and in the course of dealing with local cases, he may also have offended nature deities.14 The Chu divination text recorded the sacrifices to a number of deities, all of whom may have cursed a passerby.

No divination procedure is recorded on the later Qin jade tablets buried on Hua Mountain. The jade tablets (gui ) were themselves the vehicle of the prayer or the “announcement” (gao ). This text func-tioned as the sacrificial gift to the mountain spirit. Text, prayer and oral pronouncements are also found in the Chu divination texts. In the Xincai divination text, announcements were made by ritualist Shao concerning a Great River and in one case a gift of combined text and announcement were sent to a hierarchy of early Chu kings following gifts of jades.15 The announcement began with the expression “Oh Alas!” (wuhu aizai

13 Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 208 Yi IV & Ling 532, 678 and for no-blame no-curse, see ibid., 224 Ling 520; for specific spirits see ibid. 202 Yi I 6, 22; 215 Ling 198 & 203; 221 Ling 426, 427. One fragment does claim “great blame” (ibid., 223 Ling 468).

14 It is quite evident in the Xincai divination text, that the travels of Pingye Jun Cheng were also believed to be the cause of his illness. Not only are his specific trav-els mentioned but the greatest number of spirits appeased are those of places, par-ticularly places linked to possible burial grounds or with “earth altars,” she (see Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 187-231, esp. 189 Jia III 11, 24; 206, Yi IV 9; 207, Yi IV 55; 208, Yi IV 100 and Ling 532, 678, Yi IV 110 and 117). From the fragments we see also a greater number of horse sacrifices and a concern about death occurring “outside” (ibid., 197 Jia III 270; 207, Yi IV 52).

15 Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 189, Jia III 21, Ling 9 & Jia 23,27; 192, Jia II 134, 108.

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) and was followed by a reference to Pingye Jun Cheng as “Little Servant Cheng” (xiaochen Cheng ), an expression similar to that found at the beginning of announcements to ancestor spirits recorded on Western Zhou and later bronze inscriptions. One Xincai fragment suggests that spells or songs were also linked to divination: “(The di-viner according to) its song said: ‘This day, not yet exorcised, greatly intone, continuously…intoning, anxiously, anxiously, so tied, so bound, in the end by… . (…yao yue: shi ri wei dui dayan, jiji X yan chuo chuo ruo zu ruo jie, zhong yi… ( ) ( )

… .).16 This oral command was likely used to finalize the exorcism of baleful influences or curses. The term “so” or “as such” (ruo ) is also found in Western Zhou period bronze inscriptions before the word “to speak” yue , when the king makes an announcement. A study by Wang Zhankui shows that ruo was used in the Shang oracle bones, in the West-ern Zhou bronze inscriptions, and some transmitted texts (such as the Shangshu ) when a representative of Heaven, such as the early kings, was making a statement (ming ) on behalf of Heaven or in the pres-ence of spirits.17

In the Chu texts, we see a series of divination events that took place before and after the gifts to the spirits. In the earlier Zhou texts, gift giv-ing came after the gift-giver’s announcement about the gift-recipient to the ancestors. It is clear that these ancient practices were continued in one form or another up through the Qin period.

1. THE DIVINATION TEXT

There are two types of divination cycles represented in the Baoshan text: annually scheduled events and emergent, unscheduled events. During an annual summer sacrificial ritual and exorcism, Shao’s personal divin-ers addressed general problems and attempted to clear Shao of spiritual blame through the next year. But at unspecified times during the year, the diviners addressed acute problems, such as Shao’s physical illness. Both types were similar in that the results of the divination of one diviner were

16 Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 189, Jia III 31. It is tempting to inter-pret wei dui as the names of two auspicious hexagrams, Wei (for Wei Ji) and Dui, both in the Yijing, but the hexagrams used in the Xincai, Baoshan, and Wangshan texts never seem to be named in the text. For a discussion of ancient spells, see Harper 1985.

17 Wang Zhankui 1998.

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confirmed, changed, and refined by the divination of other diviners using different methods. The process involved the isolation of the cursing spirit through divination that was made evident or “seen” (jian ). Divination was also concerned with what type of sacrifice would satisfy the spirit. In the case of the annual exorcisms, this decision process would span a three-year period. Except in a few cases, it is not always clear when and if the proposed sacrifice was actually performed.

The divination events of diviners were referred to by later diviners as “exorcisms” (duo ) when confirming (a process that involved zhuan “turning to” or yi “moving to” the exorcism and divination event of a previous diviner) the earlier proposed sacrifices or when setting repay-ment sacrifices to spirits who presumably gave omens of good fortune. These divination records preserve the actions and words of the exorcism. After proceeding through this complex decision process, a diviner would “release” (jie ) Shao from the curse of a particular spirit or ghost by a method that involved “beating” or “attacking” (gong ) it by means of his “will” (si ) or his “command” (ming ).18 The beating of demons perceived as hiding inside the body was a method for curing illness re-corded in the Zuozhuan.19 In the Baoshan and other Chu divination texts,20 the exorcism seems to involve animal sacrifice and word magic, but other texts suggest that drums were involved.21 Another possibility is that this “beating” or “attacking” involved a procedure that might be classified as an early form of acupuncture. Excavated Qin-period texts dating to a hundred years after Shao Tuo’s death define “ghost beating” as “poking” the ghost with arrows made of thorns and chicken feathers shot from a peach-wood bow.22 Han and later texts mention the use of a needle-like

18 This may have involved the use of drums, bells, and screeching, see Harper 1985, 496. The use of music and bells in sacrifice and therapy for the occupant of the Xin-cai tomb is recorded on fragments of that tomb’s divination text (Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 192, Jia II 136; 195 Jia III 209; 205, Yi III 63).

19 Cheng 10, in Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 230. The Archer Lord of Jin asked a physician from Qin after he dreamed of two shuzi (“beings that stand up” ). The physician determined that these demons hid behind Jin Hou’s heart and throat and were hence unreachable through the method of gong.

20 Jiangling area Tianxingguan Tomb 1 and Wangshan Tomb 1; see Mi Rutian 1988, 63-64, and Li Yunfu 1995. The former text, which belonged to Fan Sheng, Lord of Diyang , dates to around 340 BCE and is not yet published. The latter text belonged to Shao Gu , possibly also a descendant of King Zhao; it dates to perhaps a hundred years earlier and has been published, see Hubeisheng wenwu kao-gu yanjiusuo 1996; Shang Chengzuo 1995; and app. 3, below.

21 See app. 1, below, n. 18.22 Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozhu 2001, 212.

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“stone” similar to jade called a “medicine stone” (yaoshi ) or “pierc-ing stone” (bian ) that was used to release the “evil blood” (exue ) in swollen areas, carbuncles, or ulcerated infections. Stone tomb reliefs from the Eastern Han period seem to depict early doctors administering this technique. Their dress—half man and half bird—suggests a spirit or shaman doctor (dressed like the death-god Rushou).23

The calendar of sacrifices and exorcisms kept by the Baoshan diviners reveals the influence of the natural philosophy of Yin-Yang Five Phases, as studied by Donald Harper.24 Harper explains that between the fifth and third centuries BCE, those who managed the calendars, the officers in charge of the archives and astrology (shi ), synchronized all natural phenomena and human activity. Curing an illness and performing exor-cisms, then, involved attention to the fluctuations of the natural forces in accordance with the lunar calendar. Although Harper feels that the Baoshan divination text was created before the period of “correlative cosmology iatromancy,” which began late in the fourth century BCE,25 I believe that the choice of days recorded in the divination events reveals a nascent awareness of natural agents and, perhaps, a correlative system of time, direction, and agent in the Baoshan material.

Within a century of Shao Tuo’s death, we know from other excavated texts that the five natural Agents—wood, fire, earth, metal, water26—in-formed every aspect of life. The Zhouli account of seasonal ailments and methods for their cure by “ailment physicians” (jiyi ) provide a context for interpreting age-old notions in a correlative manner of “five processes”:

(They) handle the care of illness for the myriad peoples. There are conta-gious illnesses every season; in spring, there are headaches, summer, itchy scabs, fall, fevers and chills, and winter, coughing and the “rising of va-pors.” (They) care for them with the Five Tastes, the Five Grains, the Five Herbs and watch over life and death with the Five Vapors, Five Sounds, and Five Senses (watching) if two out of the Nine Apertures change, or three out of the Nine Organs move. Whenever someone is sick, analyze (it according to season) and cure him. If they die in the end, the (physicians) write down what they did and give it to the Master Physician.” (zhang yang wanmin zhi jibing. Sishi jie you liji, chushi you xiaoshouji, xiashi you yangjieji, qiushi

23 Hu Houxuan 1984, 28-29; Lo 2002a, 105-11; and Lo 2002b, 208-09.24 Harper 1999. 25 Harper 2001, 103-06.26 The “generation” cycle as seen in Shuihudi Rishu (“Day Books”) and the Chu

Silk Manuscript; see A. Wang 2000, 110, table 3.2.

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you nüehanji, dongshi you sou, shangqiji. Yi wuwei, wugu, wuyao yang qi bing. Yi wuqi, wusheng, wuse shi qi sisheng. Liangzhi yi jiuqiao zhi bian, can zhi yi jiuzang zhi dong. Fanmin zhi you jibingzhe, fen er zhizhi; sizhong, ze ge shu qi suoyi er ru yu yishi

).27

Particularly telling are “Day Books” (rishu ), which detail the aus-picious or inauspicious nature of daily actions depending on the calen-drical signs for each day and the agent or element influencing that day.28 In these books, while the cause of illness is still a curse, the prognosis is affected by the agent, which influences the days of the illness. In this system a ritualist could calculate the appropriate action for a king or of-ficer according to this complex correlative calendar rather than relying solely on divination methods. Translated below are selections on illness and cures for illness from a Day Book discovered in a tomb east of Jiang-ling, across the Han River. The tomb dates to the period when the Qin army, originally located northwest of Chu, had already forced the Chu out of the Jiangling region and continued their march east to destroy all remnants of competing royal houses.29 According to the text, illness was affected by the particular agent or element in accordance with a particu-lar directional and day sign, one of ten “stem” or twelve “branch” signs of an ancient sixty-day ritual calendar—which correlate, according to Wang Aihe, with the conquest and generation cycles of the Five Phases scheme.30 Harper feels that the hemerological iatromancy (divination by “stem” and “branch” signs) evident in the “branch” section of this text did not yet reflect a full Yin-Yang Five Phases system as evident in Han texts, but more likely the simpler “Three Unities” (sanhe ) system, where elements were assigned three branch signs each. The “stem” text, however, did incorporate Five Phases correlations. Clearly, different sets of astrologers and ritualists of the fourth through third centuries BCE followed a variety of systems, none perhaps fully articulated or even prac-

27 Tianguan Zhongzai” , in Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 3, j. 9, 36-43.28 For a description of the Shuihudi rishu and a discussion of its mantic context,

see Loewe 1994, 214-35.29 The tomb dates to around 217 BCE, just after the Qin conquest of 220. For

details of the Chu move east, see Cook 1995.30 A. Wang 2000, 110-12. Harper 2001, 108-12, notes that “stem iatromancy in the

Shuihudi manuscripts is based on the correlation of the stems with the Five Phases and on the conquest sequence of the Five Phases.”

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ticed until the Han period.31 The following excerpts from two Shuihudi Day Books (A and B) provide a useful context in which to evaluate the Baoshan material.32 Much of the lore concerning illness, death, spiritual blame, curses, and ghosts is no doubt quite ancient and sheds light on earlier beliefs. Many of the ghosts appear in the Chu divination material. The following list of Stem (top row) and Branch day (bottom row) signs are for reference. The Agent and direction correlates from Day Books are added but, as Wang Aihe has shown, these exact correlations were by no means universally accepted and other manuscripts reveal slightly different sets:33

For example, from a few slips of a Shuihudi “Expelling” (chu ) text,34 we learn that on “expelling” days, “a male or female slave who escapes will not be retrieved. If you have a painful35 sickness, it will not result in death,” but on “filling” (ying ) days, “you can build quarters; penned animals can give birth; you can build a residence; you can be a Sefu (a type of bailliff); if you have an illness it will be difficult to get up.” Many days were associated with omens of death. For example a list states:

The Zi Day concerns women. There will be a death and afterwards the death of a child. The spiritual blame is located in the canal. The Chou day concerns rats. Afterwards three people will die. Yin Day concerns nets. The spiritual blame is located in Room Four. A warning of fire on the out-side. The Mao day concerns meetings. Afterwards a child, an as yet unborn younger brother, will die. [The spiritual blame] will belong to a deceased

31 See Kalinowski 1998-99 for a discussion of the xingde system of rising and fall-ing influences based on the early Han Mawangdui Xingde text.

32 Harper 2001, 107-12, translates some of these texts. My translations differ slightly from his.

33 The correlations are from Shuihudi Day Book A, and a Day Book from Fang-matan, as described by in A. Wang 2000, 94-97; for other systems, see ibid., 96-101.

34 Text from Jao and Zeng 1982, pl. 2; from Day Book B.35 The word might also be a loan for “swelling,” or “serious.”

Jia

WoodEast

Yi

WoodEast

Bing

FireSouth

Ding

FireSouth

Wu

EarthCenter

Ji

EarthCenter

Geng

MetalWest

Xin

MetalWest

Ren

WaterNorth

Gui

WaterNorth

Zi

WaterNorth

Chou

MetalWest

Yin

FireSouth

Mao

WoodEast

Chen

WaterNorth

Si

MetalSouth

Wu

FireSouth

Wei

WoodEast

Shen

WaterNorth

You

MetalWest

Xu

FireSouth

Hai

WoodEast

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in-law. ….The Shen day concerns stones. Its spiritual blame is located in Room Two. If a child is born, it will be incomplete. The You day concerns witches.36 Afterwards a small child will die within three months….

In a text determining the welfare of afflicted people, we see that if they fall sick on Jia or Yi days, they encounter problems from pork and their father’s ghost and possibly (poisoning?) from a living person. On the next two days, the father’s ghost must be appeased with red-colored meat, a rooster, and wine. However if they are “sick” (bing ) on Geng or Xin days, they will improve on a Ren and get out of bed on a Gui day. If Fever and Jupiter are both located in the Southern Region (of the sky), and (Jupiter) is red, then the patient will die on a Fire day. This pattern continues through each set of stem days with varying color, star, and ghost correlations.37

In a “Sickness” text in Day Book A,38 we read: If you are afflicted on a Jia or Yi day,39 it is due to your mother and father having cursed you. For meat (offering), come inside from the east with it inside a lacquer vessel. If you are sick on a Wu or Ji day,40 it will improve on a Geng day and you’ll get out of bed on a Xin day.41 If you don’t get out of bed and Fever resides in the east region and Jupiter is located in the east, and is a green color, you will die.42 If you are afflicted on a Bing or Ding day,43 it is due to the grandfather’s curse. For red-colored meat (use) a rooster, with wine. If you are sick on a Geng or Xin day, on a Ren day you will improve and on a Gui day recover.44 If you don’t recover, there is Fever to the south. And if Jupiter is in the south and is a red color, you will die. If you are afflicted on a Wu or Ji day, it is from a witch having

36 The Shuihudi text defines female magicians as wu and male ones as xi , a designation also seen in the Guoyu (containing tales of the Chunqiu period). Because wu can cause death by cursing, in this book I render the word as “witch.” According to a Shuihudi Day Book, a woman may become a witch during the period influenced by the Big Dipper, but if she gives birth, the child will die before three years of age; Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozhu 2001, 192.

37 Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozhu 2001, 246-47; from Day Book B.38 Jao and Zeng 1982, pls. 6-7; Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozhu 2001, 193.39 Wood days; A. Wang 2000, 96.40 Earth days; A. Wang 2000, 9641 Geng and Xin days are metal days; A. Wang 2000, 96.42 Harper 2001, 112-13, understands ‘Fever” to represent “an element of iatro-

mantic pathology” that like “Year” (sui, which I translate as Jupiter, although Harper believes the Jupiter and Year cycles were distinct) has cyclical positions. I am not con-vinced that the cycles were so clearly distinguished by all practitioners and suspect that Fever and Jupiter were both astral phenomena and at least spirits. The order of the days represents a generation cycle; A. Wang 2000, 111.

43 Fire days; A. Wang 2000, 96.44 Ren and gui days are water days; A. Wang 2000, 96.

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activated45 grandmother’s curse.46 For a yellow colored [meat] (use) a plain fish only47 with wine. On a Ren or Gui day, you’ll be sick, but on a Jia day improve and on a Yi day recover. You won’t recover if Fever resides in the center of the Nation.” 48

The text continues in this same rhetorical fashion substituting a variety of sources of the sickness (such as ghosts in the in-law’s family who had died young or were cut off from their mothers), meats used to offer the spirit (“Use dog meat, fresh testicles for white color”), colors, star loca-tions, and, finally, predictions of when and if the patient will die.

Days were even assigned gender, which would make them correlate with Yin and Yang. In a text denoted as the “Days for People,”49 we read that: “Generally Zi, Mao, Yin, and You days are male child days; Wu, Wei, Shen, Chou, and Hai days are female child days. If you get sick on a fe-male child day, you must wait for a female day to return before recovery. If there is death, then the dead must be buried on a male child day. ...”

In the text for “Visiting People” (jianren ), different days and directions are accessed for visiting with people “afflicted” (ji ), and methods given on how to cure them. For example, if you visited them on a Zi day when the eastern direction was auspicious and the west in-auspicious, but they became ill on a Chen day, there would be little hope of recovery. But if they had become sick on a Wu day, there would be a good recovery. If you were visiting them because of a death or a birth which occurred on a Shen day, then you must bring black meat from the north. The implicated ghost might be an outer ghost of the great-grand-father generation (i.e., a deceased in-law). Similar injunctions applied to each of the Twelve Branch days with variations in direction and color correlations as well as different possible sources of spectral affliction (these included not only a variety of ghosts from different branches and generations of the family but also witches).50

45 I understand the term kanxing as “given rise to and enabled” or “able to make move.”

46 Grandparents were denoted as Royal Mothers or Royal Fathers (wangmu or wang-fu); great-grandparents were denoted as High Royal (gaowang) mothers or fathers.

47 I take qin as a loan for jin .48 The text has “nation” bang , possibly a reference to the area of the sky asso-

ciated with each state, see Pankenier 1999.49 Jao and Zeng 1982, pl. 37. 50 Jao and Zeng 1982, pl. 42-44; Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozhu 2001,

245-46; from a Day Book B text.

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One strip from a “Sickness” text notes that to cure a patient on a You, Wu, Si, or Yin day, the healer must take the place (dai ) of the patient.51 This suggests that perhaps the magical operations were done upon the body of the healer in place of the patient, perhaps transferred to the patient’s body through some force of magic, the “will” or “command.”

The treatment of the dying patient also varied according to the day: For one dying on a Jia or Yi day in the third month of spring, to later have happiness, it will come from facing the east. For one dying on a Bing or Ding day, there will be happiness to his east; if he faces west evil will happen to him; the dying must stay put. On a Wu or Ji day, the dying is sent out of the house to the west. If not, there will be death. On a Geng or Xin day, the dying is sent out of the house to the north. If not, there will be spiritual blame. On a Ren or Gui day, the dying will be cursed by Numinous Ghosts. He will receive ill fortune from the east. On a Jia or Yi day of the third month of summer, the dying will receive a premature death from the south or east. On a Bing or Ding day, the dying is sent out of the house to the west; to the south, he’ll receive ill fortune but to the east there will be happiness. On a Wu or Ji day, if the dying faces south or west, there will be happiness.”

The text continues in the same vein, substituting days, directions, and fates.52

The Shuihudi text most concerned with ghosts is the “Spellbinding” text.53 It lists numerous ghosts and devils that may cause sickness or premature death through spiritual blame and then provides the magical methods for dealing with them. Some were human ghosts who returned to loved ones, or were just “wandering” (you ); some had died prema-turely, such as fetuses, victims of crime or wrongful execution, drown-ing, or were unburied (such as those killed in battle) or “hungry” (did not receive sacrifices from descendants). Other ghosts were nature spirits who took on the form of men—such as Hill Ghosts, Spirit Dogs (who played the incubus), Spirit Insects—or took on the form of animals such as Whirlwinds. Ghosts grabbed people at night, turned into old women carrying children, sneaked into bedrooms, paraded as fireflies (or “Wild Fires” yehuo ). Many ghosts were violent or howled at night. There were demons, devils, and talking wolves. Perhaps most interesting—given Shao Tuo’s symptoms—is the case where if a man finds himself in a room unable to breathe or move, it is due to a Strong Spirit (zhuangshen

51 Jao and Zeng 1982, pl. 44; Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozhu 2001, 247.52 Jao and Zeng 1982, pl. 45-46; Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozhu 2001, 249.53 Harper 1985; Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozhu 2001, 212-19.

shao tuo’s departure 91

)54 in the room. This was cured by ingesting a fragrant brew of spring water, red pig, horse’s tail, and dog’s head.

Although this Day Book is almost a century later than the Baoshan divination text, some similarities are evident. Illness was the result of spiritual blame and curse, and illness and death had to be treated in ac-cordance to natural forces, such as Yin and Yang or the directional powers and their color and day-sign correlates. On the other hand, the Baoshan text differs from the Shuihudi Day Book in the sense that, as a divina-tion text, it consists of a series of proposed actions being presented to the spirits for approval, and is not a handbook consulted (perhaps by healers and diviners) for the proper alignment of behavior and time. If we consider the Baoshan divination text as a record55 of actions taken and the Day Book as a handbook for dictating future action, then the Yi , or “Changes,” texts might be considered handbooks of signs or “images” (xiang ) associated with numerological divination, and with hexagrams derived from throwing milfoil sticks or dice. Two Yi texts exist today: the well-known Classic of Changes (Yijing , also known as the “Zhou Changes,” Zhouyi ) and the recently discovered ver-sion historically associated with the Shang, the “Book of Concealment,” the Guicang .56 Both texts consist of fragments of old songs linked to named hexagrams. The names of the hexagrams are shared in both texts, but the hexagram types do not always match and the song tradi-tions seem to be entirely different.57 Although excavated versions of Yi texts and Day Books date to later than the Chu divination texts of the fourth century BCE, it is likely that the early doctors and ritualists who organized, performed, and recorded the divination texts found in the Chu tomb had earlier versions of handbooks of omens and directives for auspicious action to consult.

Yang Hua has compared the dates, divination types, and illness progno-ses of early Day Books with those in the Baoshan and Wangshan records and concluded that the Chu diviners very likely used a Day Book of some sort to diagnose the source of the curse and whether it was likely to kill the patient or not.58 The level of sophistication and complexity in the Yin-Yang Five Phases system evident in the Qin Day Books is not evident in

54 An alternative reading is shangshen “harmful spirit.”55 For a study of stylistic similarities of the Baoshan text with the Shang oracle

bone texts dating almost a thousand years earlier, see Li Ling 1990.56 Cook 1998 and 2004; Xing Wen 2000.57 See Xing Wen 2000A, 2003; Wang Mingqian 2004; Cook 2004 and forthcoming.58 Yang Hua 2003, 568-69.

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the Baoshan divination text and does not exist at all in the Yi texts. This suggests different functions for these texts—records versus manuals—as well as an evolution from the Three Unities to the Five Phases system during the fourth to third centuries in the Jiangling region. We have no obvious evidence that the Baoshan ritualists had access to Day Books; their reference to specific hexagrams, however, does suggest their use of an omen reference text or Yi text. Since versions of both Day Books and Yi texts have been found in tombs around the Jiangling region, we know that within a hundred years both types of text were in use. Whether the Baoshan ritualists referred to a text documenting the earlier system of correlations is unknown, but it is not inconceivable given the text-rich environment of the Jiangling area.59 A study of the Baoshan divination record suggests a less detailed concern with natural influences, one more concerned with the rising and falling influences of Yin and Yang evident in the months or seasons rather than day by day.

Scholars have reconstructed the Chu calendar of months by com-paring the Shuihudi (which mentions the Chu system of months) and Baoshan texts.60 Generally the Qin calendar was ahead of the Chu calen-dar by three months. If we assume that the new year began in the win-ter, then the months can be classified by season (see table 1, below).61 Liu Yuexin, in his study of the Chu Day Book from Jiudian (also in the Jiangling area), notes the importance of Jupiter’s location to the classification of the months: “For the Tenth Month, Quxi (2), and Xiang Month (6), [Jupiter] is in the west. For the Cuan Month (11), Yuanxi (3), and Xiayi (5), [it is] in the south.”62

A summary of the religious activity by month and day suggests a ba-sic sensitivity by Baoshan ritualists to Five Phases or Three Unities re-quirements as expressed in the Shuihudi Day Book (see table 2).63 At the

59 The discovery of texts traditionally associated with Confucian and Daoist thought in Jingmen-area tombs (known as the Guodian texts and the “Shanghai slips”) attest to elite literacy and to the Jiangling metropolitan area as a magnet of multicultural talents from all over late Warring States-period China.

60 See especially Wang Hongxing 1991; Liu Binhui 1991; Chen Wei 1996a, 8-9; Li Ling 2000, 279. Chen Wei 1996a, 249, suggests that since the annual exorcism rite took place in the summer month of Xingyi the Chu new year would have begun then. Zhu, Qiu, and Li follow Chen in their analysis of the Wangshan divination manu-script. Li Ling, following Liu Binhui and the Shuihudi order, feels that the Chu new year was in the Dongxi month.

61 For variant writing of these graphs, see Chen Wei 1996a, 2. 62 Liu Lexian 1998, 92. 63 From A. Wang 2000, 93-94, 96, table 3.1. Harper 2001, 109-10, feels that the

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season lunar month number, and month name

Spring 1: Dongxi “Winter Eve”

2: Quxi “Bent Eve”

3: Yuanxi “Drawn-out Eve”

Summer 4: Xingyi “Diminished Peace”

5: Xiayi “Summer Peace”

6: Fangyue “Spinning Month” , or Xiangyue “Mortuary Sacri� ce Month”

Autumn 7: Qiyue “Seventh Month” , or Xiaxi “Summer Eve”

8: Bayue “Eighth Month”

9: Jiuyue “Ninth Month”

Winter 10: Shiyue “Tenth Month”

11: Cuanyue “Stove Month”

12: Xianma “Sacri� cial Horse”

Table 1: The Chu Calendar

minimum, it seems that balancing Yin and Yang forces may have helped determine auspicious days for divination or sacrifice. Although we can as-sume that the annual exorcisms were scheduled events and that the illness divination events were emergent, we see nevertheless a seasonal alterna-tion in terms of the correlate element or Agent. Ritualists alternated the “fire” months of summer (when Yang was at its peak) with “wood” and “water” months (when Yin was still influential, such as spring, or at its peak, such as winter). Generally, Yin-influenced days, such as by correlate elements wood, metal, and earth, were chosen for the fire season and a Yang-influenced day, such as by the correlate element fire, was chosen for the winter month. An exception to this seeming attempt to balance Yin and Yang days is evident in the case of the burial date of Dinghai, a fire day and one that had a long tradition of being an auspicious day. It was the most popular day for bronze casting beginning in the late West-ern Zhou period.64 Fire days, Ding and Bing, were used either for burial

hemerological system for the 12 branch days “bears no relation to yin-yang or Five Phase [wuxing] correlations,” but that there is a system evident for the stem days.

64 See Cook 1990, 67-70, “Auspicious Days and Numerological Preferences.”

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or in mid-winter for animal sacrifices to Shao Tuo’s patrilineal ancestral spirits—sacrifices actually performed, not merely those proposed. These may have been considered Yin events requiring the counterbalance of a Yang day. The dates of Shao’s death and burial suggest a possible rela-tion to Shuihudi concerns with directions and with dealing with the dy-

ing,65 mentioned above. Shao was buried on a Ding day and faced east. The last entry of the divination text was a Ji day, perhaps also the day of his death. The coffin had entered the tomb with the mourners fac-ing west. Animal sacrifices presented to a succession of ancestral spirits (yi or )66 were performed in summer on a wood day in year 318, but in spring in year 317 on a water–Stem/metal–Branch day, possibly suggesting an adjustment of the Yin and Yang balance necessary in the choice of the day according to the season. However, a different animal sacrifice presented in the summer of 317 on a wood/metal day would

65 I thank the late Gil Mattos for having pointed out to me that the word si refers to both dying and death and that a person who was “killed” (sha ) may not be wholly dead.

66 Li Ling 2000, 286, understands this as a secondary sacrifice, but see my argu-ments in app. 1, below, n. 23.

season Wuxing correlate month day Wuxing correlate

318 BCE: Summer South/Fire 4 Yiwei (#32) Wood/Wood

317 BCE:Spring East/Wood 1 Guichou (#50) Water/Metal

3 Guimao (#40) Wood/Wood

Summer South/Fire 5 Yichou (#2) Wood/Metal

Winter North/Water 11 Jiyou (#46) Earth/Metal

Bingchen (#53) Fire/Water

316 BCE:Summer South/Fire 4 Jimao (#16) Earth/Wood

5 Jihai (#36) Earth/Wood

6 Dinghai (#24) Fire/Wood

Table 2. The Baoshan Ritual Calendar and Five-Phase (wuxing) Correlates

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seemingly belie such a correlation, unless different sacrifices to differ-ent spirits with different animals all required balance. The type of meat presented was certainly an issue considered in the Shuihudi correlations, but such a consideration seems an unlikely level of complexity even for the cosmopolitan lineages of diviners of Jiangling during the fourth cen-tury BCE. Directions for activities were not recorded, although sacrifices to the spirit of the south were proposed in the summer, which accords with the Five Phases correlates.

The Baoshan text may be divided into twenty-six records associated with eight different dates or divination events from the years 318 to 316 BCE. Three annual exorcisms consist of three records apiece for the first two years, but include five records for the last year of Shao’s life. There are four records during the second year that simply record sacri-fices performed and the prayers made. They do not include divinations. Two were performed in the first month of spring on a water day, and two in the winter on a fire day. The exorcisms specifically addressing Shao’s failing health during the second year include one record in the spring on a water day, and four records during the winter on an earth day. Dur-ing the last year of his life, there are five records on the same day as the summer annual exorcism and one the next month, also in summer, all on earth days. The last record of the entire text is a rather sad note written on the back—no doubt after Shao’s death—stating that “the name of the district (of the cursing spirit) is unknown.” From the tomb inventory text in Shao’s tomb, we know that he was buried forty-nine days after the last divination record.

The types of sacrifice, the categories of spirits, and the types of divi-nation used may also have correlated roughly with an early sort of Five Phases scheme. These factors have been coded in table 3 and assembled in table 4, given below. Because of the complexity of the cycle of divina-tion events, I will discuss each section individually and also explain how they relate to the other sections.

Sacrificial offerings sent to the spirits included animals, jades, and clothing. The type of item sent was a reflection of the perceived status of the spirit and the amount of influence he or she may have had in removing Shao Tuo’s blame. General categories of animal sacrifice in-cluded water buffalo, pigs, goats, dogs, and horses. Black or glossy male animals were reserved for the highest status gods or those perceived to have the greatest influence at the time. The most powerful animal sac-rifice was the water buffalo. This was reserved for Chu kings and was

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generally served in offering dishes or as a large soup. But in the final year of Shao Tuo’s life, five early Chu kings each received a black water buf-falo with a fattened piglet. Shao Tuo’s patrilineal ancestors (descended from King Zhao) each received black male gelded (hence fat) pigs, but his mother received only the dried meat from a black pig. In the first year, the pigs were served as food dishes with wine. Interestingly, during this first year the father, mother, and the lian’ao (the name of a Chu of-fice) of Dongling were singled out: the father would receive dried meat from a black pig made into food offerings and served with wine. The mother was originally slated to simply receive a fattened piglet served as a food offering with wine, but this was upgraded to receiving wine with a dried black pig-meat offering. The lian’ao usually received fattened pig-lets served as food offerings, but, during the last summer of Shao’s life, his usual sacrifice was performed outside the city wall and a sacrifice of three ritual robes was added, suggesting that this spirit, perhaps an an-cestor from the mother’s side of the family (hence on the “outside”), was considered dangerous. During the last year of his life, Shao’s most recently deceased three patrilineal ancestors received whole gelded pigs served as food offerings.

Recipients of black or glossy animals were almost always ancestral spirits, although the Earth Lord of the Residence received a black ram during the third divination cycle of annual exorcism for year 318 BCE. In subsequent years, he received male pigs or rams of no specified color. The difference most likely had to do with the type of sacrifice. In the first instance, the black ram was simply a proposed sacrifice (a ju) whereas in the spring of 317 a male pig was actually sacrificed to “satiate” (yan) him. Later that year, during the annual exorcism, he was repaid (sai) with a ram for perceived good influence. During the summer of 316 when Shao Tuo was critically ill, a ram was once again proposed as a sacrifice to the Earth Lord of the Residence. Presumably, Shao Tuo died before this proposal could be carried out and before the Earth Lord’s benefi-cence could be confirmed and repaid.67

While the earth gods—Earth Altar, Earth Lord, Earth Lord of the Wilds, and Earth Lord of the Residence68—generally received some form

67 Chen Wei 1996a, 177-79, has charted some of these relationships and noted that the type of sacrifice received by nature spirits is invariant during any single divination event, but can vary among events.

68 The use of different terminology for the same god may be the result of different scribes. There are too few examples to anchor terminology to any particular scribe.

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of animal sacrifice, ritualists repaid them for their beneficence with jade, particularly in the company of other nature spirits also being repaid in jade such as Grand Unity (Taiyi), Controller of Fate, Controller of Disas-ter, Grand Water, Two Children of Heaven, and Wei Mountain. By using the order of sacrifice as an indication of relative importance within the hierarchy of nature spirits, we may deduce that Taiyi and the Occluded Taiyi (the Yin or cloud covered version)—both celestial spirits—were just above the earth gods in rank. The Controller of Fate and the Con-troller of Disaster were about equal in rank, judging by the sacrificial meat type and order. Grand Water, the Two Children of Heaven, and Wei Mountain were nature gods likely associated with local landscape features, such as the Yangzi River.

The sixth divination event of annual exorcism of Shao’s last year is interesting for the fact that Gu Ji, the most prominent diviner, took over the proceedings. He proposed clothing and goat sacrifices to a series of nature gods who had previously been paid with jade and pigs. This sug-gests that it is not always known what sacrifice would satisfy a particular spirit at a given time. In the second divination event of the annual exor-cism for the previous year, he had paid off the same deities with jade. We see in strips 212-215 (dated to 317 BCE) that the gods Grand Unity, Earth Lord, Controller of Fate, Grand Water, Two Children of Heaven, and Wei Mountain each received a type of jade, and in strips 236-238 (316 BCE) the same spirits received a type of goat.69 Both events took place during annual exorcisms and both were officiated by Gu Ji. Clothing sacrifices consisted of robes or different types of cap ties, all of which may have conferred rank upon the spirits when they assumed human form.

The term dizhu is used in strips 201-04, 206-08, 218-19, reflecting the first two years of the diviners’ efforts to cure Shao Tuo, and is used consistently within a single div-ination event. Although the calligraphy of some events differs slightly from others, I cannot confidently claim this indicates different hands at work.

69 Chen Wei 1996a, 177-79. In the Xincai text, the Controller of Fate received a deer (Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 187, Jia I 15, 210 Ling 15).

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1.1. Baoshan Terms for Rituals, Offerings, and Spirits

1.1.1. RitualsExorcism

“beating”70 gong (beating out the evil influence in the body with some sort of technique—possibly using music and unspoken and spoken commands, si and ming—or with an im-plement to pierce and draw blood or fluids out of the body)

“releasing” jie (either releasing the body from the grip of the evil influence or releasing the influence out from the body)

“expel” chu (to cleanse a space of evil influence)Prayers

“Proposition prayer”71 ju (an initial prayer used to pro-pose particular sacrifices to ancestral or nature spirits)

“Succeeding prayer”72 yi (a secondary prayer used to confirm sacrifices to a series of ancestral spirits)

Confirmation of prayers zhuan (proposed in earlier divina-tion events by a different diviner, literally ‘turning to’73)

1.1.2. Sacrificial Offerings Animal74

black or glossy75 water buffalo dai niu black or glossy gelded pig dai huan dried meat of a black pig dai xi dried meat of a pig dai shi fattened piglet fei zhong, zhong shi, zhong zhong

male pig jia whole gelded pig huan black ram gu gelded ram fu ewe zang white dog bai quan sacrificial horse xi ma

70 See app. 1, n. 18, and the discussion above, p. 84. 71 See app. 1, n. 36.72 See app. 1, n. 23.73 See app. 1, n. 42.74 Note that besides many of these same sacrificial animals, the Xincai divination

text includes horses, bear, and deer sacrifices (Henansheng wenwu kaogusuo 2003, 209-11 Yi IV 143, Ling 15, Ling 71, 137).

75 See app. 1, n. 25.

shao tuo’s departure 99

Jadecirclet of a jade pendant peiyu yi huan small jade circlet xiao huan pierced jade pendent jue strung jade disk bengpei jade disk bi tiger shaped jade hu

Clothing cap ties guandai cap ties that dangle outward peiqu guandai ritual robes yishang

Types of Offerings“To pay respects to or entertain a deity with food sacrifices, possi-

bly involving invoking the deity’s presence”76 ke “Payment to a deity in return for good influence”sai “To satiate a deity with a food sacrifice” yan “Present prepared dishes to a deity” ci “Payment to a deity by ‘sending’ jade or clothing” gui “To dismember a sacrificial animal, such as a white dog” fa “To present sacrifices in the form of a mortuary feast” xiangji

Methods of Presentation“With wine and food” jiushi “As food offerings” kui “As a great soup” da zang “Outside the city wall” jiao “As a mortuary feast” xiang

1.1.3. SpiritsAncestral Spirits

King Zhao (Chu king who is Shao Tuo’s link to Chu royalty, r. 515-489 BCE)

Wen Pingye Jun, Pingye Jun (Accomplished Lord or Pingye, Shao Tuo’s great great grandfather)

Wu Gongzi Chun (Chun of the Sire Wu line, Shao Tuo’s great grandfather)

Simazi Yin, Simazi Zhiyin, Xin Wang Fu (Zhiyin of the Sima line, New Royal Father, Shao Tuo’s grandfather)

Cai Gongzi Jia, Xin Fu (Jia of the Sire Cai line, New Father, Shao Tuo’s father)

76 See app. 1, n. 37.

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Furen, Xin Mu (Wife of Cai Gongzi Jia, New Mother, Shao Tuo’s mother)

Dongling lian’ao Zifa (Lian’ao Minister of Dongling, a deity outside of the patrilineal line of male ancestors, possible Shao Tuo’s grandfather on his maternal side or other powerful influence in his life)

Chu Kings Lao Tong , Zhu Rong , Yu Yin (mythical founder

kings of the Chu nation, possibly equivalent to nature deities)77

Jing Wang zi Yin Lu yi Di Wu Wang (five kings from “Yin Lu,” a.k.a. either Xiong Yi or Xiong Li, to “Di Wu,” a.k.a. Xiong Tong or Chu King Wu, r. 740-690 BCE)78

Ghosts Human Harm, Harm ren hai, hai Numinous Ancestors, Ancestors mingzu, zu Dead Innocents bugu Those without Descendants wuhouzhe Those on the Water shuishang Drowned People moren Those Who Died in Battle bingsi

NatureGrand Unity Tai (for Taiyi) Occluded Grand Unity Shi Tai Earth Altar She Earth Lord Dizhu, Houtu Earth Lord of the Residence Gong Dizhu, Gong Houtu

Earth Lord of the Wild Ye Dizhu Walkway Xing Residence Walkway Gong Xing Residence Gongshi Grand Gate Da Men Controller of Fate Siming Controller of Disasters Sihuo Grand Water Da Shui Two Children of Heaven Er Tianzi Five Mountains Wu Shan

77 See Cook 1994.78 See app. 1, nn. 127, 129.

shao tuo’s departure 101

Wei Mountain Wei Shan High Hill, Low Hill Gaoqiu, Xiaqiu South Nanfang Sun, Moon Ri, Yue Jupiter Sui Ximu Station Ximu Wei

From tables 2, 3, and 4 we can see that the twelve diviners used ten different methods of divination depending on the season or the day. In the summer (year 318) on a wood/wood day, diviners Gu Ji, Shi Bei-shang, and Ying Hui used the methods named baojia, xungui, and yangshi (a mixture of shell and stalk methods, see discussion below). Gu Ji again used the baojia in the summer of the next year (317) on a wood/metal day, and the next summer (316) on an earth/wood day. The same method was used by different diviners, Xu Ji, in the Winter on a earth/metal day and by diviner Guan Yi later in the same summer of year 316 on an earth/wood day. This suggests that any particular method can be used by a certain diviner once during a season, and preferably on wood or earth days. On the other hand, diviner Ke Guang used the changxiao method (possible a stalk method) in the spring and winter of year 317, but a dif-ferent diviner of the same surname, Ke Jia, used it in the summer. Per-haps spring and summer seasons, associated with the east and the south, were considered to be Yang, and winter and fall, the north and west, were considered to be Yin and therefore subject to different natural forces. Divination methods shaobao and tongge (perhaps shell and stalk methods) were used only in the winter. No divinations were recorded on fire days. By far the most active divination period was in the summer at the time of the annual exorcism, perhaps indicating that the best time for getting rid of evil influences was when Yang was at its peak.79

It is unclear whether an alternation in divination method had anything to do with Yin-Yang cosmology or even exactly which divination method is meant by the ten different names mentioned: “Protecting Home” bao-jia , “Instructing Turtle” xunmin , “Centering Stalks” yangshi

79 The Xincai text is too fragmentary to yield a list of diviners, methods, and sea-sons; some diviners shared surnames with Baoshan diviners (e.g. Gu, Xu, Ying, Guan, although the lead diviner seems to have been from the Peng family). Some of the same methods are used but also ones otherwise unknown in the Baoshan text. Most curious is the fact that some of the bone and stalk methods are specifically associ-ated with particular Ministers of the Mounds and the warlord of Wei (see Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 187-231).

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Table 3. Rituals, Offerings, and Deities by Divination Event

divination event(strip no.)/event no.

ritual type

In performance order (Chinese term)

offering type(Chinese term)

deity type

(Chinese term)

318 BCE: SummerAnnual Exorcism

(197-198) / I.1 Exorcism (gongjie) Ghost (Renhai)

(199-200) / I.2 a. Succeeding prayer (yi)

b. Succeeding prayer (yi)

c. Succeeding prayer (yi)

Animal (dai niu)

Animal (dai huan)

Animal (dai xi)

Ancestral (Zhao Wang)

Ancestral (Wen Pingye Jun, Wu Gongzi chun, Simazi Zhiyin, Cai Gongzi Jia)

Ancestral (Furen)

(201-04, 202 back)/ I.3

a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Offering (ke)

c. Offering (ke)

d. Proposition prayer (ju)

e. Confi rmation of (zhuan):

i. Succeeding prayer (yi)

ii. Succeeding prayer (yi)

Animal (gu)

Animal (dai xi)

Animal (fei zhong)

Animal (fei zhong)

Animal (dai niu)

Animal (dai huan)

Animal (dai xi)

Nature (Gong Dizhu)

Ancestral (Xinfu Cai Gongzi Jia)

Ancestral (Xinmu)

Ancestral (Dongling lian’ao)

Ancestral (Zhao Wang)

Ancestral (Wen Pingye Jun, Wu Gongzi chun, Simazi Zhiyin, Cai Gongzi Jia)

Ancestral (furen)

317 BCE: Spring

(205) / II Succeeding prayer (yi) Animal (dai niu) Ancestral (Zhao Wang)

(206) / III Succeeding prayer (yi) Animal (dai huan) Ancestral (Wen Pingye Jun, Wu Gongzi Chun, Simazi Zhiyin, Cai Gongzi Jia

(207-08) / IV a. Offering (ci):

b. Payment (sai)

Animal (jia)Animal (jia)

Animal (bai quan)

Nature (Ye Dizhu)Nature (Gong Dizhu)

Nature (Xing)

317 BCE: Summer Annual Exorcism

(209-11) / V.1a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Proposition prayer (ju)

c. Proposition prayer (ju)

d. Confi rmation of (zhuan): Payment (sai)

e. i. Exorcism (gongjie)

ii. Exorcism (chu)

Animal (whole huan)

Animal (whole xi)

Animal (bai quan)

Animal (zhong shi)

Nature (Shi Tai)

Nature (She)

Nature (Xing)

Nature (Dongling lian’ao)

Ghost (mingzu)

Nature (Gongshi)

Event I: 318 BCE Early Summer, Day Yiwei

Event II: 317 BCE Early Spring, Day Guichou(205) / II Succeeding prayer (yi) Animal (dai niu) Ancestral (Zhao Wang)

(206) / III Succeeding prayer (yi) Animal (dai huan) Ancestral (Wen Pingye Jun, Wu Gongzi Chun, Simazi Zhiyin, Cai Gongzi Jia

Event III: 317 BCE Late Spring, Day Guimao

(207-08) / IV a. Offering (ci):

b. Payment (sai)

Animal (jia)Animal (jia)

Animal (bai quan)

Nature (Ye Dizhu)Nature (Gong Dizhu)

Nature (Xing)

317 BCE: Summer Annual Exorcism

(209-11) / V.1a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Proposition prayer (ju)

c. Proposition prayer (ju)

d. Confi rmation of (zhuan): Payment (sai)

e. i. Exorcism (gongjie)

ii. Exorcism (chu)

Animal (whole huan)

Animal (whole xi)

Animal (bai quan)

Animal (zhong shi)

Nature (Shi Tai)

Nature (She)

Nature (Xing)

Nature (Dongling lian’ao)

Ghost (mingzu)

Nature (Gongshi)

Chun,

Chun,

Event IV: 317 BCE Midsummer, Day Yichou

.1

.2

III

IV.1

shao tuo’s departure 103

(224) / VII.1 Proposition prayer (ju) Animal (dai niu) Ancestral (Xin Wang Fu Sima Yin)

(225) / VII.2 Proposition prayer (ju) Animal (fei zhong) Ancestral (Dongling lian’ao Zifa)

(212-15) / V.2 a. Confi rmation of (zhuan): Payment (sai)

b. Confi rmation of (zhuan): Payment (sai)

c. Confi rmation of (zhuan):

i. Payment (sai)

ii. Payment (sai)

iii. Payment (sai)

Jade (peiyu yi huan)

Jade (xiao huan)

Jade (peiyu yihuan)

Jade (xiao huan)

Jade (1kuai)

Animal (gu)

Animal (dai niu)

Animal (dai huan)

Animal (dai xi)

Nature (Tai)

Nature(Houtu,Siming, Siguo)

Nature (Dashui)

Nature (Er Tianzi)

Nature (Weishan)

Nature (Gong Houtu)

Ancestral (Zhao Wang)

Ancestral (Wen Pingye Jun, Wu Gongzi chun, Simazi Zhiyin, Cai Gongzi Jia)

Ancestral (Xinmu)

(216-17) / V.3 a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Exorcism (gongjie)

Animal (zang) Founders (Lao Tong, Zhu Rong, Yu Yin)

Ghost (bugu)

317 BCE:Winter

(218-19)/ VI.1 a. Offering (yan)

b. Payment (sai)

c. Payment (gui)

Animal (jia)

Animal (bai quan)

Clothing (guan dai)

Nature (Dizhu)

Nature (Xing)

Nature (Er Tianzi)

(220) / VI.2 Same as VI.1

(221-22) / VI.3 Proposition prayer (ju) Animal (dai niu) Ancestral (Xin Wang Fu)

(223) / VI.4 Confi rmation of IV.3 (zhuan)

divination event(strip no.)/event no.

ritual type

In performance order (Chinese term)

offering type(Chinese term)

deity type

(Chinese term)

IV.3

Chun,

IV.2

V

V

V

V

Event V: 317 BCE Midwinter, Day Jiyou

Event VII: 316 BCE Early Summer, Day Jimao

VI

VI

Event VI: 317 BCE Midwinter, Day Bingchen

(226-27) /VIII.1 a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Proposition prayer (ju)

Animal (whole huan)Animal (zhong shi)

Nature (Shi Tai)

Ghosts (xiongdi wuhouzhe Zhao Liang, Zhao Cheng, Xian He Gong)

(228-29) / VIII.2 a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Exorcism (gongchu)

Animal (bai quan) Nature (Gongxing)

Nature (Gongshi)

(230-31) / VIII.3

a. Exorcism (gong)

b. Payment (gui) Clothing (peiqu guandai)

? Nature (curse of Nanfang ?)

Nature (Nanfang)

VII.1

VII.2

VII.3

V.1

V.3

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divination event(strip no.)/event no.

ritual type

In performance order (Chinese term)

offering type(Chinese term)

deity type

(Chinese term)

(232-33) /VIII.4 a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Proposition prayer (ju)

c. Offering (fa)

Animal (gu)

Animal (bai quan)

Animal (bai quan)

Nature (Gong Houtu)

Nature (Xing)

Nature (Damen)

(234-35) / VIII.5 No ritual

(236-38 / VIII.6 a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Proposition prayer (ju)

c. Proposition prayer (ju)

d. Exorcism (gongjie)

Animal (fu)

Animal (zang)

Animal (fu)

Animal (zang)

Animal (gu)

Animal (2 gu)

Animal (whole huan)

Nature (Tai)

Nature (Houtu, Siming)

Nature (Dashui)

Nature (Er Tianzi)

Nature (Weishan)

Founders (Chu xian Lao Tong, Zhu Rong, Yu Yin)

Nature (Gaoqiu, Xiaqiu)

Nature (Sui)

(239-41) / VIII.7 a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Proposition prayer (ju)

c. Proposition prayer (ju)

d. Exorcism (gongjie)

e. Confi rmation of VIII.6 (zhuan):

Record of offering (xiangji)

Animal (zang)

Animal (dai niu)

Animal (dai huan)

Animal (whole shi)

Nature (Wushan)

Ancestral (Zhao Wang)

Ancestral (Wen Pingye Jun Ziliang, Wu Gong-zi Chun, Simazi Yin, Cai Gongzi Jia)

Ghosts (zu, bingsi)

Nature (Gaoqiu, Xiaqiu)

(242-44) / VIII.8 Confi rmation of VIII.6 (zhuan):

a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Proposition prayer (ju)

c. Proposition prayer (ju)

d. Proposition prayer (ju)

e. Record of offering (gong)

f. Proposition prayer (ju)

Animal (fu)

Animal (zang)

Animal (fu)

Animal (zang)

Animal (gu)

Animal (dai niu)

Animal (zhongzhong)

Clothing (3 yishang)

Animal (whole xi)

Nature (Tai)

Nature (Houtu, Siming)

Nature (Dashui)

Nature (Er Tianzi)

Nature (Weishan)

Ancestral (Zhao Wang)

Ancestral (Dongling lian’ao)

Ancestral (Dongling lian’ao)

Ghost (hai)

(245-46) / VIII.9 a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Exorcism (gongjie)

Animal (niu, shi) Founders (fi ve Xing kings from Yin Lu to Di Wu Wang)

Ghosts (shuishang, moren)

(247-48)/VIII.10 a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Proposition prayer (ju)

c. Proposition prayer (ju)

d. Exorcism (gongjie)

Animal (xi ma)

Animal (dai huan)

Animal (xi)

Nature (Da Shui)

Ancestral (Wu Gongzi Chun, Simazi Yin, Cai Gongzi Jia)

Nature (she)

Nature (riyue, bugu)

Event VIII: 316 BCE Early Summer, Day Jihai

VII.4

VII.5

VII.6

VII.7

VII.8

VII.9

VII.10

(249-50) / IX a. Proposition prayer (ju)

b. Exorcism (gongjie)

Animal (fei shi) Ghosts (wuhouzhe)

Nature (Ximu wei)

VIII

shao tuo’s departure 105

, “The Long and the Short” changxiao (shao ),” 80 “Uplifting Ascendance” chengde ,81 “Little Treasure” shaobao ,82 “Red On-ion Grass” tongge , “Respecting Fate” gongming ,83 “Everlasting

80 See the use of xiao for shao in the divination text. Yang Hua 2003, 569, suggests this divination type may in fact refer to use of a Day Book.

81 For de as “ascending power” vs. “rescinding power” (xing ), see Major 1987.82 I read shao as xiao , a common loan for this time-period.83 The graph is a common loan for the graph .

event number ritualist method

I.1 Guji baojia (shell) .2 Shi Beishang xungui (shell) .3 Ying Hui yangshi (stalk)II Record of sacri� ceIII Record of sacri� ceIV Ke Guang changxiao (stalk)V.1 Wu Sheng chengde (stalk) .2 Guji baojia (shell) .3 Ke Jia changxiao (stalk)VI.1 Xu Ji baojia (shell) .2 Ke Guang changxiao (stalk) .3 Nong Qiang shaobao (shell) .4 Qu Yi tongge (stalk)VII.1 Xia Yu and Wei Zhuang Sacri� ce .2 Xia Yu and Wei Zhuang Sacri� ceVIII.1 Guji baojia (shell) .2 Chen Yi gongming .3 Guan Beng changling (shell) .4 Wu Sheng chengde (stalk) .5 Xu Ji boling (shell) .6 Guji baojia (shell) .7 Chen Yi gongming (stalk) .8 Guan Beng changling (shell) .9 Wu Sheng chengde (stalk) .10 Xu Ji boling (shell)IX Guan Yi baojia (shell)

Table 4. Names of Ritualists and Their Methods by Divination Event

II.1II.2IIIIV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII

Shao Ji SacrificeSacrificeShao Ji

Gu Ji

Gu Ji

Gu Ji

Gu Ji

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Numinous One” changling , “Mixed Numinous One” boling .84 It is assumed that all the names referred to either tortoise shell (baojia, xungui, shaobao, changling, boling) or stalk (yangshi, changxiao, chengde, tongge, gongming?) methods.85 Since most divination occurred in the spring or summer months, there is no obvious Yin-Yang classification of the meth-ods by season. During the winter methods baojia, changxiao, shaobao, and tongge were used, revealing an alteration between shell and stalk method. This tendency to alternate between the two methods is also evident for the summer of year 316 BCE. In either season, the divination sessions begin with a shell method.86 The stalk method tongge was used only once, in the winter, perhaps for the use of a bit of “red” Yang essence during a Yin month.

Three stalk method names provide insight into the divination process. We know that the yangshi, chengde, and gongming methods each resulted in hexagrams displayed in vertical rows of Yin (broken) and Yang (solid) numbers.87 We know that there were at least two versions of hexagram (gua ) or Yi texts associated with stalk divination (how the stalks were thrown and the numbers read from the stalks is unclear):88 the Zhouyi (or Yijing), associated in Han texts with Zhou traditions, and the Gui-cang, associated with Shang traditions. From excavated manuscripts we know that while they both used a similar set of hexagrams (with some

84 The graph for ling was written with a element in the Wangshan and Xincai divination texts. Another popular shell type was the Mangling “vari-colored tor-toise,” sometimes specified as “small” (xiao). The diviner Peng Ding specialized in this method as well as in the Boling method (Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 187 Jia I 25; 192 Jia III 133; 193 Jia III 157, 172, and Yi III 19; 195, Jia III 204). Peng Ding also used a method called Mingluo (the luo graph seems to include an-other element, which commentators have deciphered as ), perhaps loan graphs for a type of grass or stalk, niaoluo (mentioned as separate types of grass but in the same line of the Shijing ode “Kuibian,” Mao no. 217). For a discussion of divination methods and specialists in the Zhouli, see Loewe 1994, 165-67.

85 See Peng Hao 1991; For Li Ling’s and Chen Wei’s views see app. 1, notes on each method. Hu Yali 2002, 71, recently published a slightly different list, claiming that all are shell methods except dayang , yangshi, chengde, and gongming.

86 This practice of alternation and seasonal accord is generally consistent with that discovered by Loewe in his study of late Warring States, Qin, and Han prac-tices using shells, bones, and stalks, based on transmitted textual references; Loewe 1994, 166-71.

87 See Cook 1998; Harper 1999, 853; Li Ling 2000, 251-71. 88 Ailan and Xing Wen 2004 and Xing Wen 2000b suggest that since hexagram

names are not mentioned, the stalk divination type practiced by Baoshan diviners may have been different from those who used the Zhouyi or Guicang manuals; Loewe 1994, 178, draws from the Yili to provide a picture of the divination event.

shao tuo’s departure 107

overlapping names) the accompanying texts preserve variants of differ-ent sets of legends. The Guicang text was discovered in a Qin tomb not far from the Baoshan region. It is possible that the Baoshan hexagrams were interpreted according to the omen texts or signs (xiang)89 of the Guicang, whose lines were drawn from legendary story-cycles preserved in the Chu Silk Manuscript and in later texts,90 and seem to associate aus-picious and inauspicious signs with Yin and Yang. These texts include the deities known as the Controller of Yin and the Controller of Yang, as well as images associated with cosmic birth mythology: the Fusang tree, Fuxi, Nüwa, darkness, and lightness.91 The Guicang also includes im-ages of ecstatic flight and possibly of shamanistic rituals of entertain-ing spirits with dance and music in a trance—behavior used by modern fortune tellers in China.92

While it is unclear what omens the diviners used in their interpreta-tions of the hexagrams, there are a few omens recorded in the Baoshan text indicated by the word “to see” (jian ), which may have been a sim-plified expression of “to appear” (xian ). In event V.1 in the winter of 317 BCE (translated in Appendix One), Xu Ji used the baojia method to divine the presence of a curse. The answer was positive because “The Grand Unity (Taiyi) looks at a tiger-shaped jade”—possibly a reference to astral movements or perhaps their reflection in some divination imple-ment on the ground. Xu Ji used a tiger-shaped jade and a jade disk as part of the exorcism. First he used them to select a good month and day, and then he “sent” them, a ritual process that transferred the jades to the de-ity, possibly by hanging them upon a sacrificial animal.93 A second omen is recorded in event V.3 of the same date (this and the next example are translated in Appendix One), in which the diviner Nong Qiang used the shaobao method to test the presence of a curse. The answer was posi-tive and he “sees Xin Wang Fu who died prematurely.” The diviner Qu Yi then (in V.4) confirms the result and the omen. Seven days later Xin

89 See Cook 1998; Lewis 1999a, chapter 6; and Cook forthcoming; Li Ling 2000, 260, notes that first a hexagram was derived (suan ) through calculation (shu ), then provided with a symbolic meaning (xiang) in the form of text. For a discussion of the rise of shu “calculation” in the Warring States period, see Harper 1999a, 822ff.

90 See these texts, below, chap. 5.91 For a discussion of this mythology and the Shang cosmic model, see Allan 1991.92 See Morgan 1988; Wang Mingqin 2004; Cook forthcoming. Harper 1999, 866,

suggests that shamans (witches or spirit technicians) (wu ) were increasingly relegated to lower levels of the religious hierarchy during the Warring States period.

93 Luo 2005, 90.

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Wang Fu Sima Yin, Shao Tuo’s great grandfather, was presented with a black water buffalo sacrifice. On the same day, another ancestral spirit that died prematurely, Dongling lian’ao Zifa, was presented with a fat-tened piglet sacrifice. Both omens appeared with the use of a method believed to involve a tortoise shell and not stalks.

Traditionally, omens in cracked shells were simply cracks read as either auspicious or non-auspicious. In order to “see” beyond the cracks, the diviner had to have a more sophisticated fortune-telling device. Today we possess divination boards, shi , that is, a model of the cosmos con-trolled by Grand Unity (Taiyi), which have been excavated from third-century BCE tombs. Li Ling has shown how the shapes of these boards depicted cosmic models of the Yin-Yang Five Phases scheme used in the Day Books and in southern silk texts with diagrams of the seasons or of Yin-Yang Five Phases that have been found in Changsha, Hunan, tombs (down the Yangzi River from Jiangling, in an area deeply influenced by Chu culture).94 Although excavated examples of the board date to the end of the Warring States period and later, Li suggests that cosmic models date back as early as Neolithic burials—which were bordered on each side with dragons and tigers formed out of shells—and can be traced up through the 443 BCE lacquer box—with the dragon and tiger pictured in the heavens around the twenty-eight stellar mansions.95 The dragon-tiger motif continued forward into post-Han records of cosmic board texts, such as the “Taiyi Dragon Head Board Classic” of the Five Dynasties. In a Han silk painting from Changsha, Taiyi is pictured as a horned man riding a dragon, flanked by the Rain Master (in the form of a dragon) and the Thunder Lord (in the form of a tiger).96 By the Tang period, we find texts for “Taiyi Boards” and “Thunder Lord Boards.”97 The evidence of an astral dragon and tiger motif (common motifs in Chu art) evolving from as early as the Neolithic suggests that our Baoshan omen depicting a perhaps dragon-headed Taiyi looking at a tiger-jade may have been the result of a fourth-century BCE cosmic board manipulation; at least it is a divination type different from cracks in a tortoise shell.

94 Li Ling 2000, 127-28, describes a Song dynasty “Taiyi Twelve Spirit (months)” board. For the Chu Silk Manuscript, see Li Ling 1999, 171-76, and for the “Yin-Yang Five Phase” illustration from a silk book of the same name found in the Han-period tomb at Mawangdui, Changsha, see Fu and Chen 1992, vol. 1, 145.

95 Li Ling 2000, 78-81, 110-12.96 Found in Li Ling 1992, 23; and Cook and Major 1999, fig. 9.2.97 Li Ling 2000, 113-19, 126-28.

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The ritual specialists in the Baoshan text included thirteen diviners who also performed exorcisms. Since the family names of most of these diviners are also found in the administrative records (buried also in the northern compartment of the tomb), we can assume that these were local Chu ritualists, possibly connected to the royal family. While the Baoshan texts do not refer to the specialists by title, judging from regu-lations preserved in the transmitted ritual texts, they were likely lower ranked zhanren or buren who worked under a director of divi-nation, a taibu . When it came to Shao Tuo’s funeral (not recorded in the Baoshan divination text), control over the ceremonies and divination may have shifted to the dazongren , xiaozhongren , and simple buren , who, as Loewe explained, assisted the master of the house in protocol, took charge of particular divination methods, and carried out the divination. However, the numbers of diviners and methods used by the ritualists assigned to Shao Tuo were many more than accorded a dafu or shi rank in the ritual texts.98 If we look at the Baoshan diviners with three or more records, we see that although they specialized in particular methods of divination, they performed both the scheduled annual and the non-scheduled exorcisms. The schedule of divinations recorded in the Xincai text cannot be reconstructed as yet from the fragments, but it is clear from the names of methods and diviners that families of di-viners who specialized in particular methods were attached to the Chu elite, and traveled with them.

In addition to the diviners, three ritualists (shiren ) were specifi-cally in charge of managing the offerings (gong ) and associated prayers (dao ), but not the divination required to confirm the rituals.99 One of these ritualists was a member of the Shao family who was charged with making a black water buffalo into a great soup for the royal ancestor King Zhao (who reigned during the fifth century BCE). He also presented of-ferings of black gelded pigs for Shao’s patrilineal ancestors. The other two ritualists handled the sacrifices to Shao Tuo’s great-grandfather and the lian’ao of Dongling.100

98 For a discussion on how the roles of diviners overlapped with archivists (or as-trologers) and shamans, see Xing Wen 1998; Loewe 1994, 165-67, 177, 180-82, 184. Loewe 1994, 165-67, 177, 180-82, 184.

99 In the Xincai text, they were also in charge of musical performances involving bells that followed the sacrifice of large animals or “offerings” (gong).

100 Lai 2002, chapter 5, suggests that as relatives they may have performed a “sub-stitution” ritual, i.e. “taking up the position” (wei ) as in the Corpse (shi ) ritual.

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The diviners attempted through a process of elimination to isolate the source of the curse. The spirits and “districts” they searched out reflect the level of their concern for Shao’s problems. Over the three years, we see in the annual exorcisms an increasing focus away from Shao’s outer problems at court to inner problems with his residence and person. At first, when his ambitions were frustrated and his promotion slow in coming, the diviners exorcised Shao from the curse of Human Harm (possibly a curse put on Shao by a competitor at court or by a ghost). They proposed and confirmed sacrifices to Shao’s lineage spirits—King Zhao, four patrilineal spirits including his father, and his mother. They also proposed that animal sacrifices be sent to the Earth Lord of Shao’s Residence and to a dead Chu official, the lian’ao of Dongling, who must have had some influence over Shao Tuo when he was alive. This pro-posal would be confirmed the following year, 318, when the sacrifices to Shao’s recently deceased parents (confirmed the previous year) were finalized. These diviners refined their prediction of forthcoming happi-ness to a period of time within the next two months.

Shao’s “problems with his person” mentioned vaguely in the first year’s annual exorcism became clear by spring of the next year. He was ill. A single diviner sacrificed pigs to the Earth Lords of his Residence and of the Wilds and a white dog to the spirit of the Walkway—focusing on lo-cal earth deities possibly offended during Shao’s daily movements. This emphasis was continued during the summer annual exorcism, which first addressed the problem with Shao’s person and residence as well the issue concerning things “not going smoothly on the outside.” Besides sacrifices to the Earth Altar and the Residence Walkway, the diviner proposed sac-rifices to the Occluded Grand Unity, the astral spirit Grand Unity when invisible—the cosmic high god in its yin form.101 He then released Shao from the curses of his Numinous Ancestors and cleared his home of evil. The next diviner focused on Shao’s problem with “evil in the king’s affairs” as well as his eternal “problems with his person.” This diviner focused on gifts of jade to cosmic and earth deities such as Grand Unity, the Earth Lord, the Controller of Fate, and the Controller of Disasters, Grand Water, the Two Children of Heaven (tree or water spirits or per-haps dead children),102 and Wei Mountain (possibly a local sacred moun-

101 For a discussion of the invisible, or Yin, power of Taiyi (Yinde ), see Sun and Kistemaker 1997, 166-67.

102 See the two demons that killed Jin Hou, n. 19, above.

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tain to the west).103 He repaid Shao’s lineage spirits with food sacrifices. The third diviner proposed sacrifices to three mythical founder gods of Chu104 and exorcised the curse put on Shao by victims or Dead Innocents (perhaps the ghosts of people killed in crimes, or unfairly convicted of crimes and put to death during Shao’s administration).

By winter, Shao’s illness was again critical. Four diviners tried to iso-late the curse. The first suggested that Grand Unity needed more jade. He fed the Earth Lord and Walkway another pig and white dog and sent cap strings (symbols of prestige) to the Two Children of Heaven. He suggested that cooked food be presented at a place named Piyang. The second diviner accepted the sacrificial recommendations for the exorcism but rejected the food presentation, saying that Shao would get better on a Geng or Xin day (both metal days that in the Shuihudi Day Books were often associated with recovery). The third diviner changed this predic-tion, phrasing it in the negative: Perhaps Shao would be sick until the middle of the month. He also claimed that the curse came from Shao’s grandfather and therefore proposed sacrifices to him. The fourth diviner confirmed this and suggested that Shao might be sick until the middle of the month. Seven days later a separate set of ritualists performed sac-rifices first to the grandfather and then to the dead Chu official. They prayed that Shao would be blessed with a complete lifespan.

During the last recorded annual exorcism, five diviners dealt with Shao’s personal problems, problems in his residence, particularly in his bedroom where by this time he was confined to bed. The first diviner proposed sacrifices to the Occluded Grand Unity to three Shao broth-ers who died without descendants—a cosmic god and minor, perhaps jealous or hungry, spirits. The second diviner proposed a sacrifice to the Walkway spirit of Shao’s residence and then cleared his residence of harmful influences. The third diviner “beat” Shao’s curse and sent a gift of cap ties to the spirit of the south. The fourth diviner proposed sac-rifices to the Earth Lord of the Residence, the Walkway, and the Grand Gate. The fifth diviner simply confirmed that now there was no spiritual blame, or curses, left.

Gu Ji, the diviner who began the annual exorcisms every other year, also initiated the divination session on Shao’s health that immediately followed the annual exorcism. Gu recommended animal sacrifices to all the heaven and earth spirits previously mentioned, to the mythical Chu

103 See the map of the Jiangling region in Blakeley 1999, 11, fig. I.I.104 For their associations with Yin and Yang, see Cook 1994.

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founders (cosmic gods), and to the High Hill and Low Hill, presumably local nature gods. Gu ordered these spirits to help Shao walk again and then released Shao from the curse of Jupiter. The second diviner rec-ommended animal sacrifices to the Five Mountains, to King Zhao, and to the four patrilineal ancestors of Shao (these included his grandfather and father). This diviner released Shao from the curses of his ancestors and specifically from those who died in battle, and then confirmed Gu Ji’s sacrifice to the High and Low Hills as the appropriate location for the curse.

The third diviner confirmed Gu Ji’s recommended sacrifices and added recommendations for sacrifices to King Zhao, the dead Chu official, and to the spirit of Harm itself. This diviner ordered that they stand Shao up and protect and cure him. The fourth diviner recommended a sacrifice to five ancient Chu kings (note a preference for groups of five) and re-leased Shao from the curse of spirits on the water, specifically those of people who had drowned. Finally, the fifth diviner suggested sacrifices to the river god Grand Water, to three of Shao’s patrilineal ancestors, and to the Earth Altar. He (or perhaps she) then released Shao from curses of the Sun and Moon and of the Dead Innocents.

Twenty days later a new diviner, using the method usually associated with Gu Ji, asked the shell if Shao Tuo was going to die or not. Could nothing be done? This diviner recommended sacrifices to the spirits of those whose lives had been cut short without descendants and then released Shao from the spirit of a specific Jupiter station, Ximu, com-manding that this spirit get behind Tuo and raise him up. As we know, this eleventh-hour appeal to high gods and mean ghosts failed, and Shao died in the summer of 316 BCE, the victim of a curse from an unknown spirit in an unknown region.

There are three types or stages of sacrifice mentioned: the ju, the yi, and the sai. Since sai is found in later texts as a repayment sacrifice, scholars generally agree that this sacrifice was to repay a spirit for sending down blessings. The first two types are a little less clear. Li Ling suggests that the ju represented an “initial” sacrifice or prayer and yi represented the “next” or secondary sacrifice or prayer.105 That these two work as a set and that there is some sort of system is clear from the text, but there are

105 Li Ling 2000, 286; Yan Shixuan 2000, 104-05, recently pointed out that the Chu graph (written with over ) was polyphonic and could be read as yi ( ), neng ( ), or dai ( ). He feels that in the Baoshan case, it should be dai and refers to a diviner’s taking over for another. For ju, he reads yu but does not explain why.

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not quite enough examples to prove without a doubt what that system was. From an examination of the first two types in terms of their sacri-ficial objects (i.e., what spirits are being addressed, mostly a succession of ancestral spirits), it seems that the first stage was actually a proposed sacrifice, a “raising up” (ju ) of prayer, rather than a record of an actual sacrifice. The secondary prayer seems then to confirm the proposal par-ticularly when ancestral spirits are the objects. Although there are records of actual sacrifices, how these mesh with the proposed and confirmed prayers is difficult to know. Other particularities include the fact that yi prayers (and perhaps actual sacrifices) occurred only in the summer of year 318 and in the spring of year 317, whereas ju sacrifices occurred in the summer (and once in the winter) of every year. It is possible that the yi sacrifices were the continuation of an earlier diviner’s work that was not included in these records and that the ju sacrifices initiated in year 316 would have been followed by yi if Shao Tuo had still been alive. For example, spirits who received yi sacrifices in the summer of year 318 and the spring of year 317 included Shao Tuo’s patrilineal ancestors, distant lineage founder King Zhao, great-great-grandfather Pingye Jun, great-grandfather Wu Gongzi Chun, grandfather Simazi Yin, and his father Cai Gongzi Jia. His mother received yi sacrifices in the summer of 318 but not the following spring. In the summer of year 316, the patrilineal ancestors received a ju sacrifice. The type of offering in either case was roughly the same. The sai sacrifices to these patrilineal ancestors as well as his mother were recorded in the summer of year 317 with the same sacrificial animal offerings but with slight additions in the presentations. No yi sacrifices were recorded for any spirits other than ancestral spirits associated with Shao Tuo’s direct lineage. Those lineage spirits and the spirits of the most recently dead (such as the spirits of Shao’s mother and father, his grandfather, and an outer lineage spirit, the lian’ao of Dongling) seem to have been considered the most likely culprits for Shao’s curse and hence received the greatest number of proposed sacrifices (summer) and actual sacrifices (spring and winter).

Recipients of sacrifice included ghosts and distant kings. Ghosts were the spirits most likely to be “beaten” by the diviners in the summer ex-orcist ceremonies. They included the spirits of people who had died before their time, by ill means, without descendants, or without burial (as with soldiers or drowned people). There were two groups of distant kings—the mythical (Lao Tong, Zhu Rong, and Yu Yin, as given in the preceding list of Baoshan sacrificial and ritual terms), and the histori-

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cal (the Five Jing Kings). The mythical group received the same type of sacrifice (goats) as many nature spirits (the Earth Lord, the Controller of Fate, the Two Children of Heaven, the Five Mountains), whereas the Five Jing Kings were offered water buffaloes and piglets as in the case of powerful lineage ancestors. The water buffalo sacrifice was proposed for King Zhao in the summers of 318 and 316 as part of the annual ex-orcism, and for Shao Tuo’s grandfather in the winter of 317 during an acute period of Shao’s illness. When it came to the actual sacrifice to his grandfather (and to the lian’ao of Dongling) seven days later, pigs were used, despite the fact that the original proposal of a more prestigious offering of water buffalo by diviner Nong Qiang had been confirmed by another diviner (Qu Yi). Except for this winter ju ceremony, the only other activity during the winter consisted of food, jade, and clothing gifts to nature spirits.

There seems to be a correlation between season and the source of curses in the Baoshan text, on the one hand, and curses by certain an-cestral spirits and ghosts on particular days in the Shuihudi text, on the other. On Jia and Yi days, one’s mother and father (meat offering); on a Bing or Ding day, one’s grandfather (rooster sacrifice); on a Wu or Ji day, one’s grandmother (fish); on a Geng or Xin day, Outside Ghosts and Those Who Died Young (dog meat and testicles); on a Ren or Gui day, Outside Ghosts of People Cut Off from Their Mothers (dried and sliced meat). Although the correlations of divination days with the types of sacrifices are not similar in the two texts, there may still have been some concern to match the meat type proposed to these deities in the Baoshan text with Yin-Yang or other natural agents rather than simply to indicate rank.

Although nature spirits such as animals, whirlwinds, and mounds or hills, are mentioned in the Shuihudi Day Books as sources of spiritual blame and curse, the range of nature spirits mentioned in Baoshan is not reflected in the Shuihudi texts. Nature spirits in the Baoshan text include astral and earth deities. Among the astral deities, there are Grand Unity and its Yin counterpart, the Occluded Grand Unity, Sun and Moon,106 Jupiter, and the Jupiter station Ximu.107 Proposals for sacrificial gifts of

106 I suspect it is the astral bodies of the sun and moon that is indicated and not the stars (see Sun and Kristemaker 1997, 135-36).

107 This station was located in the Yin chronogram, the Yan astral field, and the You province in northeastern section of the sky (Pankenier 1999, 265).

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jade and ritual robes to Grand Unity were made in the summer as part of the annual exorcism, but jade was actually sent during the winter cri-sis. Pigs were sacrificed to the Occluded Grand Unity also during this time. The Sun and the Moon, Jupiter, and Ximu Station were exorcised like ghosts during the annual exorcism as possible evil influences on the sick Shao Tuo. Cosmic deities, the Controller of Fate and the Control-ler of Disasters, often received sacrifices at the same time as the Earth Lord. As a team they both received goats, but when the Earth Lord was worshipped separately as during the winter crisis, his hunger was “sa-tiated” with a pig. Earth deities included those of the Earth Altar, the Earth Lords of the Residence and of the Wild, the Walkway, the Resi-dence Walkway, the Residence, the Grand Gate, the Grand Water, the Two Children of Heaven, the Five Mountains, Wei Mountain, High Hill and Low Hill, and the South.

As Shao Tuo’s illness intensified so too did the sacrifices to the earth deities—those Yin deities with perhaps the greatest control over his corporeal self. The diviners particularly focused on deities that Shao Tuo may have offended in the course of his daily life around his home, such as the Earth Lord of his Residence, the Residence itself (which had to be cleared of noxious influences), the Walkway of the Residence, the Great Gate, and the Earth Lord of the Wilds. The Earth Altar was most likely his personal Earth Altar possibly composed of a stone pillar or mound with vegetation and placed on the right side inside the main gate of his residential compound.108 Goats and pigs were sacrificed to the Earth Lords and dogs to the Walkway and Gate. Outside his home, other potentially offended deities included geographical nature spirits such as those of the mountains and rivers. Except for the horse offered to the river spirit, Grand Water, and the pigs offered to the High Hill and the Low Hill, goats and items of ritual clothing were generally offered to the Two Children of Heaven, the Five Mountains, Wei Mountain suggesting a more distant connection to the patient’s condition. Again, these ritu-als were proposed during the summer and carried out during the spring, summer, and winter months.

Attention to individual days in the Baoshan divination record occurred in the dating formula, as mentioned above, and also in the final statements or predictions. During the annual exorcism event of 318, during the first month of summer, ritualists predicted that relief of Shao Tuo’s personal

108 Kominami 1987; Wang Shenxing 1988, 145.

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problems and problems at court would occur during “this period” (qi ), presumably referring to the summer season. The next ritualist re-

fined this prediction to either the second or third months of summer. A prediction during the third month of spring in 317 suggested that Shao’s problems would be so much better as to have an audience with the king the next month, the first month of summer. Predictions made during the annual exorcism of 317 suggested that Shao would not only achieve happiness during this period but that he would be free of spiritual blame (and curses) for three years and would become famous.

During the winter crisis, predictions were limited to the correct time and place to present sacrifices to relieve Shao’s illness. First a Jiayin day (wood/water) was suggested at a place called Piyang, possibly to the east if the Shuihudi scheme was accurate for this period. The next diviner approved the sacrifices along with an exorcism but claimed that Piyang was not a good location. Another diviner suggested that Shao would be sick until a Geng or Xin day (within the next two days), which accords to the Shuihudi scheme of metal days for cures. The next diviner made the prediction less specific and suggested Shao would be sick until the middle of the month (the second month of winter). During the divina-tion cycles of 316, the diviners did not make predictions. Instead they tried to manipulate the cursing spirits to raise Shao back up out of bed and cure him.

In summary, we can see that the Baoshan diviners’ sensitivity to time in their regulation of the calendar of divination and in the timing of sacrifice events may represent a consciousness of natural forces that evolved into the sort of Five Phases scheme represented in the Shuihudi Day Books. The pantheon of Chu spirits was vast, yet divination regard-ing their influences seems to have been focused in the summer season, the time when Yang influence would be strongest. Winter was generally avoided except when acute episodes of Shao’s illness forced divination and sacrificial activity. The larger pattern of Yin and Yang influences seemed to dictate the divination calendar and the choice of days, but had little influence on which spirits in the pantheon were addressed—con-firming that the Chu worship of these spirits had a longer history than Chu attention to Yin-Yang Five Phase type correlations.

This impression can be confirmed with a comparison of the early fourth-century Baoshan divination text with the slightly earlier Wangshan divination text, discovered in a tomb northwest of the Chu city of Jinan in Jiangling in 1965. The Wangshan bamboo text was among broken bam-

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boo baskets in the eastern chamber of the relatively rich tomb of Shao Gu , possibly a great-grandson of King Dao (r. 401-381 BCE) who lived before or during the reign of King Wei (r. 339-329 BCE)109—a gen-eration before Shao Tuo. This text, while extremely fragmentary, reveals the same formulaic structure as the Baoshan text.110 Many of the divina-tion methods, the sacrifices, the spirits, and even the patient’s symptoms are similar to those mentioned in the Baoshan text. The family names of some of the diviners (for example, Ke and Xu) are also familiar from the Baoshan material, suggesting that diviners came from lineages of ritual specialists.111 The Wangshan text seems to have been written during the summer and winter months of Xingyi (month 4), Cuanyue (month 11), Xianma (month 12). The annual exorcism was performed in summer. During this Yang month of Xingyi, water days were chosen (Guihai, day 60 and Guiwei, day 20). During the Yin month of Cuanyue, fire days were chosen (Bingchen, day 53, and Dingsi, day 54), but so also was a water day (Guichou, day 50). During the Yin month of Xianma, an earth day was chosen (Jiyou, day 46). Shao Gu, like Shao Tuo, suffered from a chest illness, but one that he seemed to feel in his bones. Like Shao Tuo, he was partially paralyzed. The diviners predicted improvement on a Bing or Ding day, both fire days, on an earth day (Jiwei, day 56), and recovery on metal days (Xinchou, day 38, and Gengshen, day 57). Diviners proposed that the Inner Purification ritual (neizhai ) be performed on earth (Jisi, day 6), wood (Jiazi, day 1) or metal (Gengshen, day 57) days and the Outer (or Wild) Purification ritual (yezhai) be performed on a metal (Xinwei, day 8) day.112 Sacrifices were recommended on wood (Yichou, day 22) or earth (Jiwei, day 56) days. Although it is difficult to recover much of a system from this extremely fragmented text, there does seem to be a general preference for earth, wood, and water days for sacrifices and fire or metal days for improvement from illness. The inconsistencies,

109 Some scholars read Shao (written with an additional “heart” element ) as dao ; see Hubeisheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 1996, 211-13. During the Warring States

period the addition of semantic elements to phonetic graphs was relatively random. 110 The formulaic nature of the Baoshan text is discussed by Li Ling 1990, and

more recently by Hu Yali 2002.111 The methods listed for the Wangshan Xu and the Baoshan Xu have different

names.112 The Xincai text records the performance of the Inner Purification ritual on

the eve of a Gengwu day (Henansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2003, 192 Jia III 134, 108).

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however, do suggest that the Wangshan bamboo text accorded less with a later Yin-Yang Five Phases system than did the Baoshan text.

We do see a consistency between the two texts in the hierarchy of spirits and sacrifices. The same triad of sacrifices—ju, yi, sai—was used to propitiate similar ancestral spirits (including, King Zhao, sires of Pingye and Dongling, and his father), Chu Founders (Zhu Rong, Yu Yin, Lao Tong), ghosts (such as Innocent Victims, Numinous Ancestors), nature spirits associated with civilized places (such as the Earth Altar, Earth Lord of the Residence, and the Walkway), nature spirits associated with the wilds (such as the Mountains and Rivers, the Great Water, and the Two Children of Heaven), and cosmic spirits (such as Grand Unity and the Controller of Fate). Spirits associated with the earlier Four Regions (sifang) system seem more in evidence. Sacrifices were proposed to direc-tional (or astral) spirits such as the South, the Northern Altar (Beizong

), The Royal Child of the North (Wang zhi Beizi ), and the Great King of the East (Dong Da Wang ).113 The existence of a King in the East suggests his opposite, the Royal Mother114 of the West attested in later texts, but in fact the west is not mentioned in either the Wangshan or the Baoshan texts.

By comparing the Baoshan divination material with the later Shuihudi Day Book and the earlier Wangshan divination text, we can see an evolv-ing tendency to calculate ritual events according to changes in patterns of abstract natural forces. In each text, attention by ritual specialists to the effect of the rising and falling influences of Yin and Yang on human health and behavior is evidence suggesting that this aspect of Warring States-period natural philosophy had deep, perhaps very ancient, roots. However, no matter how abstractly or in what detail the rising and falling influences were calculated, the actual sources of illness still had names and perhaps faces.

113 Some scholars link references to the Great King of the East, the Holy King , and Zhao Wang into a hierarchy equivalent to King Jian, King Sheng, and King Dao; see Peng Hao 1988, 68.

114 We know from the Shuihudi text that the title wangmu referred to a grand-mother spirit.

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2. THE LACQUER PAINTING

The painting of guests arriving and a single man departing depicted on the lacquer box found in the northern compartment of Shao Tuo’s tomb consists of five scenes (figures 11, 12). The scenes can each further be di-vided into three categories according to their direction of movement: left, right, and static—figures face to the left, to the right, or with their backs toward the viewer. Willow trees all seem to blow to the right, perhaps the east if the viewer is imagined as facing north (as would a supplicant at court) or west if the viewer faces south (the position of a ruler and the direction of “up” on ancient Chinese maps). For the sake of discus-sion, I will assume the painting was “read” like an ancient Chinese map, the viewer faced south, and the wind blew toward the west—although, in point of fact, since the painting was circular, it is in some sense di-rectionless. I understand the trees to function as scene breaks. From the changing leaves and the migrating geese, the season is autumn.115

There are five figures in the static scene (figure 12a), possibly a scene depicting the departure of the man dressed in white or yellow (the third person from the left, with hat straps hanging down his front)116 in the center facing right (west). To his right facing him are two figures, possibly his wife (suggested by the looped coiffure and fuller dress) and an atten-dant.117 To the viewer’s left (but on the central figure’s right side) are two figures with their backs to the viewer: these are perhaps his sons or other important figures. Over the heads of each set of figures are sets of two flying birds, all flying left (east) against the wind. This static sending-off bears some resemblance to those depicted in the upper registers inside the house structures of Han funeral paintings at Mawangdui and Jinque-shan ,118 although the clothing and hats of these funeral scenes are quite different from the Baoshan scene. In the Mawangdui depiction (see figure 13) we see that the two kneeling figures wearing light blue and

115 Cui Renyi 1988, 72-73.116 One point against the argument that the painting depicts mourning is a line in

the Liji that states that straps do not hang down on mourning caps (sangguan bu lü ; “Tangong, shang”; Liji Zhengzhu 2.4a). The fact that this was an issue brought

up in the Liji suggests the lack of a uniform standard. 117 According to many passages concerning funeral rites in the ritual texts, the

women should stand to the west of the body facing east, and the men to the east of the body facing west. This accords with the painting.

118 See Li Ling 2004, 168, fig. 4.

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Figure 11. Departure Ceremony on Round Lacquer Box(The accompanying alternative version of fig. 11, on the facing page, has been digitally edited to bring out various fine details.)Originally with figures painted in blue, black, and yellow or white against a dark background. The robes have a red or red-and-black striped trim. Belts were black or

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white. Caps were black or blue. Horse ornaments were blue. The horses were shades of red or brown as were the tree trunks and chariots. The tree leaves were blue and white. Skin tones were the same as the lighter horses. After Hubei, vol. 2, color plate 8. The painting is around the lid of a round lacquer box. Abstract winged dragon designs of red, blue, and yellow decorate around the sides of the bottom and on the top of the lid. The bottom of the box has a mountain décor somewhat similar to the spirit-tree base seen in figure 4b, above.

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red robes had small black hats and three female figures standing be-hind the deceased, Lady Dai. The only headgear for the women was a spray of flowers or herbs dangling out in front of their foreheads. The clothing was not funeral clothing (described in the ritual texts as made of plain colored roughly woven fibers); indeed, Lady Dai’s outfit was patterned with swirl-ing clouds and small figures over a bright red, reminiscent of the paintings on her coffin.119

The depiction on a vessel of people engaged in a ceremony was created over a century earlier than Shao Tuo’s burial. Bronze vessels with inlaid or incised multi-register scenes depicting people engaged in hunting, religious ceremonies, battles, and other scenes (some in-cluding supernatural beings) were made during the fifth century BCE both to the north, in Houma

, Shanxi, and down the Yangzi, in Jiangsu.120 These were widely distributed and clearly known to the Jiangling artists. Snippets of similar scenes were painted onto the cheeks of the double-headed dragon lacquer box from Tian-xingguan (see figure 7b). Both the Tianxinguan box and the round pictorial Baoshan box are distinct from the earlier tradition in that neither is made of bronze and both were stor-

119 See Hunan bowuguan et al. 1973, pl. 76. For her coffin, see, for example, pl. 27. Her actual costume did not have small creatures on it, see pls. 80-252.

120 Thote 1999b.

Figure 13. Han Funeral Painting from MawangduiAfter Hunansheng bowuguan and Zhongguo kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo 1973, fig. 38.

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age not service vessels. Alain Thote suspects that the southern Yangzi incised vessels of hammered metal, being much easier to produce and transport (in contrast to the more conservative Houma tradition), were used for other ceremonies besides ancestral sacrifices, and in this sense might be considered precursors of the Jiangling boxes.121 Nevertheless, the Baoshan box represents a pictorial tradition we see more commonly in Han tomb art.

Hunting scenes, exorcism scenes, and scenes of processions in chari-ots, carved onto blocks in Han tombs or, more rarely, painted onto lac-querware or silk, are common features of Han tomb décor.122 The mixture of supernatural, historical, and everyday events as depicted in Han tombs supports Wu Hong’s idea of the tomb as a “happy home” out of which a ghost would have no desire to travel. This painting in the Baoshan tomb, while perhaps a precursor of the more complex tableaus of Han tombs, can only be read within the context of contemporary and local tombs. Perhaps it is simply a depiction of an important event in local history, set into the tomb to remind the deceased of his rank and identity. Certainly, the hats123 and costumes in the Baoshan painting, like those in the sending off scene for Lady Dai, do not seem funereal in nature—except perhaps the central departing figure that is in white. The figures are dressed as if they were sending their master off on a trip.

In figure 12a, to the right of the gathering is a single man (with hat and straps blowing left) in a chariot (facing west) holding the horses in check. This man with his back to the viewer may represent the waiting chariot driver. A solitary dog124 is crouched before the still chariot, and a solitary bird above the dog flies towards the right (west). The presence

121 Thote 1999B, 22. Thote also notes (24) the use of imagery in common with the middle Yangzi River Valley culture, such as birds perched on top of objects and horned hybrid creatures with a bifurcated body.

122 For lacquer examples, see Li Zhengguang 2002, figs. 21, 22, 114, 130, 131; and Fu and Chen 1992, 62 (reprinted in Cook and Major 1999, 134, fig. 8.6). In paintings on silk, see Fu and Chen 1992, 32-33; for stone examples, see Liu et al. 2005, 131, 136 (1.9), 258, 271; Kaifeng dichu wenguan 1983, 40-56; Nanyang Handai hauxiang-shi xueshu taolun bangongshi 1987, 83, 89, 91, 97, 221-23, 273; Wang Leiyi 1989, 134-39, 147, 154, 170-72.

123 The hat of the central figure may be a military style hat (see Sun Ji 1991, fig. 11-8) unless it is simply a sideways view of the high-crowned lopsided hats worn by the other figures. I can find no other record with a name for this style of hat.

124 The color of the dog in the photograph would seem to be blue, but this may be due to color leeching from the tree leaves. The color for the bird overhead is similarly difficult to discern. Other birds are white, but this one and the two over the heads of the woman and her attendant are bluish.

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of the dog suggests that the man departing, like the poetic persona in the closing scene of the “Li Sao” poem, will go on a hunt (perhaps after greeting the guests).125 The bird, the only one in the entire painting fly-ing to the right or west, may represent the eventual flight of the hunter. At the far left, separated by windblown trees, are symbols of the hunt: a white dog chasing a white boar.126

Coming just right of the static scene of figure 12a, separated by a tree not so windblown, are depictions similar to those in the static scene but with the addition of another figure with his back to the viewer and with the central figure and his chariot driver missing (figure 12b). Two figures, dressed in blue and yellow (or white) robes and wearing hats with hanging straps, are walking in the same direction as the solitary man in the rightmost position of figure 12a, described above. He moves to the right (west) and towards the group of three standing men. Two of these three seem to wear the same dress as the standing men in the static scene of figure 12a, suggesting that they are either the same people in a dif-ferent time (after the solitary man has departed) or different people of the same rank in the same time (part of the same party as those in the static scene). The third of the three, placed in the center, has the same blue color of robe as the figure to his right and the front figure of the walking pair (but with a distinguishing white belt), suggesting they are of similar rank—perhaps brothers. The straps from their hats fly in the same direction (to the left, east) as two birds overhead. The birds, like all other birds in the painting except the solitary bird in the static scene described above, fly east. This scene most likely depicts the greeting party for the guests arriving in three chariots described below.

To the left of the hunting scene (at the left end of figure 12a) and to the right of the scene with the greeting party (figure 12b) is placed a connected scene of guests arriving (depicted as follows, figure 12c). The high and relative status of the guests is evident from the varying number of horses and attendants and from the type of chariot décor

125 Cui Renyi 1988, 74, feels that the man is mounting his chariot to go meet the guests.

126 Cui Renyi 1988, 73, claims that since dogs and pigs are domestic animals this scene places the entire painting next to a residence. Based on this, he feels that the fleet of chariots is arriving at the residence. The pig (probably a boar, given what seems to be hair on its neck) and dog, however, are running through the woods, much like other wild and supernatural animals in Han hunting scenes. A white boar may have been considered to have supernatural qualities. In a Han-era variation of this paint-ing, it is a boar (see chap. 4, n. 14, below).

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and hat style. The guests arrive in three chariots with attendants on foot and are greeted by a kneeling figure (in white or yellow, possibly mourn-ing clothes) depicted at the far left. This figure kneels before the only tree in the painting that bends to the left (east) suggesting a difference in time and space between the scenes depicting the arriving guests and the scenes depicting the send-off and greeting parties described above. In each chariot there are three figures, the driver and two passengers. The first chariot to arrive is a three-horse chariot. The driver bends for-ward as if in greeting, and two other figures, a smaller one (with no hat) behind another (dressed in yellow or white127 and with a tall cap) all face forward. Under a trailing plume at the back of the chariot is a person (with no hat and carrying a tall staff) followed by three runners. The second chariot (also trailing a large plume) is a two-horse chariot with the same number of occupants but with the central figure (with a blue cap and robe) facing away from the viewer. No attendants follow; there is only a scene division of a rather static tree, suggesting no division of time and space between the scene of guests arriving in two chariots and the guests arriving in a single chariot.

Between the static tree and the windblown trees with the running pig and dog comes the final chariot of the arrival scene. It has three horses like the first chariot. This third chariot contains a driver, attendant, and a rider dressed in black with a blue cap with his back facing the viewer as in the second chariot. This third chariot has no plume and the head decora-tion of the horses hangs down rather than sticking upward, as is the case with the other two chariots. However, like the first chariot, behind this chariot there is an attendant holding a staff. But unlike the first chariot attendant, this last one has two birds flying overhead. All—chariots, birds, attendants—are moving to the left (east), the same direction as the first two chariots and quite likely represent members of a single large party of guests of different rank and relationship to the deceased.

This subject of the painting on the Baoshan, Tomb Number 2, round lacquer box is a precursor of one of many typical scenes found carved into stone tomb tiles or blocks128—scenes described by Michael Loewe in

127 It is difficult to determine the color. Hu Yali 1991, 501, claims it is yellow.128 D. Liu 2005, 380-82, points out that the Baoshan picture fits the Han genre and

notes especially a Han-period painted mirror which includes a hunting scene with a wild boar. Elsewhere two figures play liubo. He describes them as scenes of secular life and therefore distinct from the mythological scenes. However, in Han depictions of liubo games often immortals are the players. It was a popular game in the pattern of a “cosmic diagram” and linked to divination (see Bower 2005, 369-71).

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his study of Han funerary practice as “intended to ensure the deceased a safe, smooth, and speedy passage to their destined ends.” These scenes depict mythological tales, ritual performances, “the recitation of a prayer designed to bring about the desired end; or they might show a newly ar-rived soul reaching the company of those who had gone before.”129 These pictures, he notes, like the mirrors and other objects and texts placed in Han tombs, served not only to amuse, remind, and aid the deceased in the afterlife but also as guides to their appropriate position in the com-prehensive Yin-Yang Five Phases system.130

The Baoshan painting on one level may simply represent an important event in Shao Tuo’s political life and hence be a status symbol essential for establishing his rank in the spirit world. The choice of color and the style in the clothing and caps, the vivid blues and mournful whites and blacks, may simply have represented official garb or have been special to local funerals. On another level, the painting may also symbolically rep-resent the deceased’s setting off on a journey into the wilds to “hunt.” As in the Chuci song of departure, the hunt was a metaphor for the hun’s movement away from home into a borderland before flight into heaven. Although it is difficult to be sure of directions in a circular painting, it is possible to understand that the departing man and the arriving guests are coming from and going to opposite directions. If we understand that the spirit headed west (leaving the residence), the arriving guests would be coming from the east, the direction of the Shao Tuo’s tomb ramp and the chamber set for the feast. If we take tombs and residences as reflec-tions of each other, then these guests could be arriving to present gifts at his funeral, indicated perhaps by the addition of apotropaic feathers and staffs to the procession.131

Abstract images of flight—dragons and phoenixes—frame the paint-ing around the box. As in most Chu tombs, Shao Tuo’s coffin and other tomb equipment were also decorated with dragons and phoenixes,132 the mythical beings that pulled the hun persona in the “Li Sao” up to

129 Loewe 2005, 102.130 Loewe 2005, 103, 107.131 In a tale preserved in the “Tangong, xia” chapter of the Liji, a ruler, upon ap-

proaching a funeral, employed a shaman to dispel the evil (e ) with a peach-wood brush and dagger-axe (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 4, 3.5a).

132 For the bird as intermediary to the supernatural, see Childs-Johnson 1989. For a survey of phoenix imagery in Chu art, see Li Zhaohua 1991. For a depiction of a man with wings, tail feathers, and bird feet riding a phoenix in the Tianxingguan tomb, see Jingzhoushi bowuguan 2001, 19, fig. 39; see fig. 17, below.

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heaven.133 Shao Tuo’s tomb, which was both “home” and a chariot, was packed and ready for his departure. Judging from the amount and types of goods packed into his tomb, the journey was perceived to be long and arduous. He would require food, jade, and clothing offerings, charms, and weapons to deflect the many unhappy spirits, ghosts, and demons that populated the supernatural landscape. The painting functions as a metaphor for Shao Tuo’s departure from the tomb into the wilds.

133 Dragons and phoenixes were standard equipment for spirit quests and sky travel in Han and later tales. One example is the Han tale of Western Zhou King Mu who traveled to the western paradise of Xiwangmu, Grandmother of the West. (On “wangmu” used to refer to one’s deceased grandmother, see n. 46, above.)

CHAPTER FIVE

THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE AFTERLIFE

And then, ordering peers of Zhuanzhu to at-tack these beasts with bare hands, the King of Chu then drives a quadriga of tamed hippo-griffs, rides a chariot of carved jade. Waving withy pennants on fish-barbel staffs, trailing banners studded with luminous moon pearls, he raises a cock-halberd pointed and sharp. On his left is the carved Crow Caw bow, and on his right are strong arrows in a Xia quiver.

“Rhapsody of Sir Vacuous,” D. Knechtges, trans.1

Songs such as “The Summoning of the hun” (“Zhao hun”) suggest the occurrence of a flight after death to unfamiliar and frightening border-lands filled with foreign peoples2 and hybrid monsters. Before Shao Tuo’s burial, the diviner Wu Yang called to the soul that fled with the patient’s body “to the earth’s far corners.” He attempted first to frighten it back with descriptions of the horrors to be found in the east, the south, the west, the north, up in Heaven and down in the Earth. The diviner then tried to entice the soul back from the Four Regions and from Above and Below, with a picture of a luxurious home, where a chariot awaited to take him to a feast fit for a king. Towards the end of this summons and after a game of liubo (a cosmic game of natural forces, no doubt linked to divination), the diviner, who might as well be describing the funeral feast, noted that the guests had settled down with wine and song to “give delight to the dear departed.” After this last chance to return (no doubt before the tomb was sealed), the diviner formally sent off the spirit. It

1 This passage is from the beginning of section II, see Xiao Tong 1987, 63. Writ-ten by Sima Xiangru around 150 BCE to describe the Yunmeng hunting park associ-ated with lore about the king of Chu.

2 The “Wangzhi” chapter of the Liji has a similar passage describing the barbar-ians of the various regions. This passage describing the Yi, Man, Rong, and Di of the east, south, west, and north, probably rhymed and may have been part of a common song (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 5, 4.10a-11b).

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“stood on the marsh’s margin and looked far out on the distance” and set out in a team of chariots—as if on a royal hunt—off to the south.3 While the version of this song collected during the Han period and pre-served in the Chuci may not be exactly like the diviner’s summons during the fourth century BCE in Jiangling, the directions of the soul’s move-ment suggest a link to earlier Chu traditions. If we read the movements in the song in terms of funeral tradition we might understand the soul’s meeting with the Earth God in the Land of Darkness to represent the burial of the body (along with the hunpo). We would know then that when the spirit first left the body it traveled east (source of the rising sun and the direction the heads of the Chu deceased faced), then followed the Yang trajectory westward (perhaps in half-snake form, as the deceased is depicted in the Mawangdui funerary banner of circa 168 BCE) via the south before arriving in the cold north. Besides the Four Regions,4 the spirit also traveled to heaven and into earth. This pre-burial cruise of the soul was a metaphor for the post-burial journey of the spirit—in this “Zhao hun” version, to the south (instead of to the west as in the “Li Sao”) at sunrise.

David Hawkes pointed out this song’s intertexual links with other magical or spiritual landscapes preserved during the Han period, such as those in the Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas)5 and chapter 4, section 15 of the Huainanzi (compiled under the sponsorship of the Han prince of Huainan): “a type of literature in which terrestrial and mythical geography blend together.”6 John Major describes the topogra-phy as “the shadowy region where the terrestrial plane meets the dome of the heavens, the realm of the cosmic pillars and the gods that dwell among them.”7 The dangerous nature of this landscape and of Heaven itself as described in the “The Summoning of the hun” song leads Wu Hong to argue that the purpose of the tomb was to provide the dead a safe and happy home, one that simulated paradise and involved no travel into unknown regions beyond the tomb. Wu’s analysis of early Han fu-nerary banners discovered in the Changsha tombs of Mawangdui (tombs

3 Hawkes 1985, 223-30.4 Allan 1991 first pointed out that the Four Quadrates (Four Regions) represented

the supernatural landscape.5 Carnes 1980, table IV, shows the different types of beasts divided up by direction.

For a discussion of magical geography, see Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 1995, 58, 87.6 Major 1993, 190.7 Major 1993, 205

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associated with post-Warring States-period Chu culture, which traveled downriver from Jiangling into the ancient Dongting Lake region and into modern northern Hunan province)8 rejects the notion held by many other scholars, namely, that the spirits of the dead (Lady Dai, or her son in a second painting) are depicted riding their own dragon tails through a celestial space of stars and mythical beings on their way to the moon.9 His analysis of the paintings on the outside of Lady Dai’s inner coffins, however, suggests a journey through clouds filled with magical beings, but a journey contained within the tomb.10 This journey represents a dan-gerous time. It is perhaps the time period described by Confucius in the Liji when the hunqi is everywhere, and nowhere (ruo hunqi ze wu bu zhi ye, wu bu zhi ye ),11 in a sense lost for perhaps as long as three years for people of rank who must make it all the way to Heaven. Wu notes, “[T]he first or outermost coffin separated her from the living; the second coffin represented the underworld in which she was protected by spirits and auspicious animals; and the third coffin was transformed into an immortal land.”12 He explains that the scenes in the painting represent dualistic images of the deceased: the underworld and Heaven, the deceased as a wrapped body at the funeral sacrifice and the deceased as recognizable and named spirit in the otherworld. He rejects the notion that the scenes represent a narrative of transcendence, but believes that they represent the idea of the deceased’s continued exis-tence in the paradise contained in the coffin.13

This is an intriguing idea if we consider the evidence of the coffin or tomb as a metaphorical carriage going on a metaphorical journey to paradise (in the case of Han times) or Heaven (more likely the destina-tion before the proliferation of the Daoist immortality cults so popular during the Han period). In other words, perhaps the ancient Chinese did not believe that spirits literally journeyed outside of the tomb and that the preparation of horses and carriages in tombs since the Shang pe-riod, or armies in the case of the First Emperor of Qin, was all to guard

8 See Cook and Major 1999, esp. Major’s chapter 8.9 Wu 1992, 121-27.10 Wu 1992, 128-34. Loewe 2005, 103, makes the observation that clouds depict-

ed around the edges of Han mirrors buried with the dead “formed a passage way by which the dead were to be brought to their appropriate positions within this compre-hensive system [i.e., the paradise inhabited by immortal beings].”

11 From “Tangong, xia” (Liji Zhengzhu, sect. 4, 3.17a).12 Ibid., 134.13 Wu 1992, 122-27.

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against the dangers inherent underground rather than to carry them up to Heaven. But the texts are clear, Heaven, where the ancestors resided, was up (shang ), not below. The Baoshan evidence likewise suggests that while one or some aspects of the soul were contained by the tomb, others, what we are calling the spirit, did escape. I believe, as do most scholars, that the Mawangdui painting does in fact represent transcen-dence and a journey out of the tomb.14

The Mawangdui paintings basically consist of three registers, or scenes (see figure 13): one at the bottom with the deceased as corpse surrounded by attendants at a sacrifice, one in the middle with the deceased standing and surrounded by attendants, and one at the top with the deceased trans-formed into a demi-dragon and flying, like the mythical moon goddess Chang E, towards the moon. Each scene is surrounded and separated by monsters, spirits, and mythical beings. The first two scenes are enclosed by two intertwining dragons in a shape that scholars claim to represent a wine vessel (hu ).15 Separating the larger upper register, which all schol-ars agree represents Heaven, is a pair of guarded gates. While most accept that what is placed below the gates must represent the underworld, inter-pretations of the first two scenes bounded by the wine-vessel shape vary.16 I suspect that the first scene of sacrifice with the corpse represents the deceased in the inner coffin. This scene is surrounded by watery creatures of the underworld and is supported by a grinning earth god with snake companion. Above this scene, in the center of the vessel, are depicted jades, cloth, and spirit animals much as we would find either painted on or attached to the coffin in the tomb. The second scene, then, could be understood in one of two ways. It might depict the sending off ritual in funerals as suggested by the analysis of the Baoshan painting above, an earthly simulacrum of the underground scene. Alternatively, it could represent in narrative fashion the deceased having emerged from the coffin into the outer coffin, the compartments of the house-like tomb. In either case, a spirit animal—a man-faced bird—acts as a guide to the next scene, that is, out of the vessel or tomb, through the gates (repre-sented by upside down “T” shapes) into Heaven and the spirit world. There the two dragons which formed the vessel or tomb fly free of the

14 This conjecture has been inspired by Loewe’s seminal study published in 1979.

15 See a review of Shang Zhitan and Loewe, among other scholarship, in Wu 1992, 125.

16 Wu 1992, 124-25.

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deceased, one under the moon entangled with spirits, and one under the sun entangled with the Fusang tree of life.17 I suspect that the vessel may double as a dragon chariot with the lid functioning as an umbrella over the head of the deceased who stands on a wheeled platform and is surrounded by clouds. The idea of the tomb as carriage was likely quite ancient. Early Western Zhou tombs with the outer coffin built over a chariot or with chariot wheels placed on either side of the outer coffin have been discovered in the Chucun burial ground in Shanxi province;18 moreover, Confucius was asked by a relative of a recently deceased ac-quaintance if he would give him a chariot to act as an “outer coffin” (guo

).19 While one aspect of the deceased, such as that termed the earthly po in some texts, may have remained with the body in the underworld, there is no question that some other aspect of the deceased’s identity, such as that termed the cloudy hun in some texts, journeyed beyond the tomb up through the gates to the spirit world.20

Images of flight on Shao Tuo’s coffin are not as concrete as those of the Mawangdui tombs (dated to around 168 BCE). Except for the fero-cious dragon heads at the ends of his coffins, the winged patterns of phoenixes and dragons on his coffin are basically geometric and abstract in nature. The décor on the inner coffins of the tomb of Zeng Hou Yi (d. 433 BCE) discovered in Suixian, Hubei, is not so abstract, however, and allows us to understand more deeply the role of the inner coffin. The inner coffin of Zeng Hou Yi is covered with panels dividing the surface into architectural spaces: windows, doors, and walls covered with intricate paintings of monster-faced guardians in rows, raptors or geese in open array, intestine-like patterns of interlaced dragons and phoenixes, birds and snakes, and monsters whose bodies (like Han depictions of creator spirits Fuxi and Nüwa) consist of intertwined snakes.21 These images

17 See Fu and Chen 1992, 19-25.18 Zou Heng 2000.19 Lunyu zhengyi, “Xianjin” , in Zhuzi jicheng, vol. 1, sect. 11, 240.20 For a discussion of the inconsistent textual evidence for hunpo as a single or

divided entity, see Brashier 1996. In later times, there is evidence for belief in more than two souls, particularly as interrelated cosmological, calendrical, and divination schemes became more complex. The Chu interest in bifurcation in its religious art as well as the obvious tendency towards multivalent symbolic and numerical systems supports not only a split soul, such as the hun and the po, but the possibility of more spirits connected to a single physical entity particularly as the Chu moved later in time farther east, absorbing local variations of shared beliefs.

21 See the analysis by Thote 1991. For a discussion of Chu founder gods and their relation to Fuxi and Nüwa, see Cook 1994. Guo Dewei 1995, 268-73, links these fig-ures to characters in the Shanhaijing.

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were precursors to the dragon-headed musician and warrior snake-eat-ers and the qi (“energy, vapor”)-cycling phoenixes on the Mawangdui inner coffin and to the monster-face birds and animals on the paintings discussed above. In the case of the Zeng Hou Yi coffin, the doors were on the sides and the windows on the ends.22 On the Baoshan coffin, like the Mawangdui examples, doors are not evident but abstract windows might be determined at the ends. Both the Ma wangdui and Baoshan in-ner coffins included the décor of a round jade disk (bi). The Mawangdui example was painted on the foot end of the inner coffin whereas the Baoshan example had an actual jade disk suspended at the head end of the inner coffin. The painted white and signs on the head end of the Baoshan outer inner coffin (see mention above, in relation to figure 2) may indicate an extension of the window décor (in a cross design at the head and a square design at the foot) through both layers of inner coffins. The addition of architectural features of the inner coffins supports Wu Hong’s notion of the coffin as “home.” On the other hand, the fact that these features are doors and windows also supports the notion of move-ment, of the need to enter and to exit and to move beyond the “home.”

Shao Tuo’s head and tomb faced east, the direction of the rising sun and moon. The feast for greeting ancestors (counterpart to the sending-off feast, zu ) was prepared in the eastern compartment. It seems that east was the initial step in Shao Tuo’s journey. By the end of the fourth century BCE, when the cosmology of Five Phases had begun to replace the older Four Regions scheme, we see that the eastern direction was imbued with the symbolism of birth and rebirth.23 Myths in texts noted for their shadowy magical landscapes, such as the Shanhaijing, Huainanzi, and Chuci, can be categorized according to their association with geo-graphical directions and the Four Regions scheme.24 In the east was the “spirit tree” (Fusang) upon which the ten suns perched.25 This tree was connected to trees in the other three directions by the underground world of the dead, the Yellow Springs, a place inhabited by turtles, dragons, and fish-like creatures.26 The four trees pictured at the corners of the

22 Thote 1991, 36. For Mawangdui, see Hunan 1992, 4-5, 13, 15. For Baoshan, see Hubei 1991, vol. 1, 64-65, vol. 2, fig. 19. Thote 1991, 168-69, argues that the inner coffin designs at Mawangdui do not represent windows.

23 A. Wang 2000, 75-92.24 See Allan 1991, esp. chapter 2.25 The ten suns may have represented the ten-day Shang week, each day governed

by one of the ten signs of the ancestral spirits; see Allan 1991; Keightley 2000.26 Allan 1991, 29.

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late Warring States cosmological text (the Chu Silk Manuscript discov-ered in Changsha) suggest the currency of this belief near the time of Shao Tuo’s burial.27 The spirit-tree of the west, symbolizing the direction of the setting sun and moon, is likely represented by the tree sculptures buried in the northwestern corner of Tomb 2, Tianxingguan, Jiangling (see figure 4b). Heaven—or the sky above the earth—was the counter-part of the underworld and had its own river of eternal flow, the Silver River (Milky Way), associated in later Daoism as an actual path traveled by immortals, sometimes accessed through the omphalos in the west, Kunlun Mountain.28 The east, then, was associated with timelessness and the birth of time; the west, by contrast, was associated with the death of time, but consequently, also timelessness. The pictures of the deceased in the Mawangdui paintings show the deceased as immortal spirits riding their dragon tails facing the moon (source of the elixir of long life) but positioned at the top of the paintings eternally caught between the sun and the moon (see example in figure 13). It is likely that Shao Tuo’s ritual and funeral practitioners were familiar with the metaphors of flight and ecstatic travel, if not the legends of spirit world. It seems equally likely that Shao Tuo’s hun was envisioned as escaping the tomb to the east and rising with the Sun and Moon to travel west.

Comparison of Baoshan Tomb 2 belonging to Shao Tuo with Wang-shan Tomb 1 belonging to Shao Gu provides further evidence of role of the tomb equipment.29 Shao Gu’s tomb was simpler than Shao Tuo’s: it was basically divided in half with the majority of the preparations for the feast in the larger eastern compartment and his inner coffin and traveling equipment in the western half. His double-layered inner coffin was placed in the northern section of the western compartment and the chariot pieces, horse ornaments, and weapons in a section to the south. Inside the innermost coffin, he lay with his head to the east with a jade disk placed at his crown. To his sides were bows and arrows and one of a number of swords made by King Goujian of Yue (r. 496-65 BCE).30

27 For a translation of the Chu Silk Manuscript, see Li and Cook 1999, 171-76. For a copy of the illustrations, see Barnard 1972. A. Wang 2000, 107-09, notes that while the manuscript represents the traditional sifang structure, it does so in terms of seasons and time, not regions, hence linking it to fluid cosmic movement, like the operation of the wuxing. For an analysis of the manuscript and figures as a calendrical diagram possibly associated with cosmic boards (shi), see Harper 1999, 845-46.

28 Schafer 1977; Porter 1996, 89.29 He was a short man similar in type to modern northern Chinese and died when

he was 30 years old; Hubeisheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 1996, 223, 230. 30 A copy of the inscription is found in Ma Chengyuan 1990, 371-72.

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Window patterns were carved into the lid of his innermost coffin. To his left in the compartment to the south, in among the paraphernalia for the hunt (symbolized perhaps by a painted lacquer screen of jump-ing and slithering phoenixes, birds, deer, frogs, snakes, and serpents, see figure 14), were also musical instruments—a drum and a zither. In the eastern compartment—centrally placed in among a vast array of bronze, lacquer and pottery vessels, dishes, and tables—was a painted lacquered double-headed long-tongued masked beast with antlers. This

beast or monster, commonly referred to as a tomb guardian (“Protect-Tomb Beast” zhenmushou ), is one of many found in elite tombs around Jiangling.31

Examples are seen in figures 4c, above, and 15, facing. The former, from the south-facing tomb of Tianxingguan 2 (belonging to the wife of an earlier generation of Chu official of the Fan family), was placed in the northwestern corner of the western compartment along with a spirit-tree and drinking and feasting vessels. This tomb had no northern compartment at all (chariot paraphernalia and weapons were placed in

Figure 14. Lacquer Screen from Wangshan Tomb 1This screen includes six depictions of two griffin-like ducks catching snakes. On each half of the screen one bird is shown from the left, right, and top views. In each depiction, snakes are caught with their beaks. To the sides of the ducks leap spotted deer with antlers. Beneath the center-facing pair of ducks sit two frogs, perhaps representing a single frog if we understand the two halves of the screen to be reflections of each other. The bottom rim of the screen is crawling with large serpents and the upper rim with a mountain-like décor, suggesting lower and upper earthly realms between which the animals romp. After Hubeisheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 1996, fig. 66.

31 Notably, Shao Tuo’s tomb did not have one. According to Yang Yi 2004, 54, over 300 examples have been found that belong to the pre-Qin period.

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the western compartment, and the feasting vessels, musical instruments, and a liubo game in the eastern and southern compartments). The lat-

ter example, from the east-fac-ing tomb of Wangshan Tomb 1, was placed in the eastern compartment, the only com-partment, except for a narrow southern compartment, with weapons, tables, umbrellas and other equipment for the jour-ney. The eastern compartment, like the Baoshan tomb, repre-sented the banquet room. It is significant that in either case, the zhenmushou sculpture is linked to the passage of the soul out from the body (into the eastern compartment) or out from the tomb (from the northwestern corner).

Scholars have debated the meaning of the tomb-guard-ian beast for many years, suggesting numerous overlap-ping and sometimes related representations: a mountain spirit,32 an earth god (tubo

),33 a spirit guide (mingjing ),34 a dragon travel guide for

the spirit,35 a guard or warrior, a death demon, or a demon queller, an underworld guide or

guard, a spirit in the process of transformation, the spirit of a shaman, a war god, an ancestor tablet, or a dragon totem.36

32 After horned creatures described in the Shanhaijing.33 After a horned creature with a long tongue described in the Chuci, “Zhaohun”;

Tang 1982. Erkes 1939 understood Tubo to be the Chinese god of death.34 Peng Hao 1988.35 After long-tongued dragons embroidered on Chu silks. 36 Zhang Jun 1988, 62-126; Guo Dewei 1995, 197-98; Pi Daojian 1995, 104; Hu

Figure 15. Zhenmushou Tomb-Guardian Sculpture from Wangshan Tomb 2Front view of bifurcated sculpture. Note the similarity to the contemporary Tianxingguan Tomb 2 zhenmushou (shown in fig. 4c, above). After Hubeisheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 1996, fig. 99.

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Li Jiahao suggests that it is a spirit figure evolved from a drum called Earth Cricket (tulou ) in Chu tomb inventory texts. This figure is de-scribed in the Shanhaijing as an animal with four horns that lives in the western mountains and eats people. Elsewhere it was associated with the north.37

Pi Daojian, in a recent study of Chu art, summarizes the way in which the zhenmushou figure evolved, based on over 400 examples from Jiangling burial sites in Yutaishan.38 These examples are coterminous with the rise and fall of Chu influence over the Jiangling metropolitan area—the time period ranging from the mid Spring and Autumn period to late in the Warring States (from the seventh to fourth centuries BCE). The material used for the image was a carved wooden block with antlers inserted into the top.39 The design is tripartite: a square wooden base, a long-necked wooden head rising out of the center of the block, and deer antlers in-serted into the crown of the head. Over time the form bifurcated into a Janus-like curving pattern, with two heads and four antlers. The incised décor and facial features became less abstract at the beginning of the Warring States (fifth century BCE). Painted body details such as scales and cloud patterns were added, suggestive of the dragons described in Chuci songs. Jenny So links the more concrete figurations of this beast to the early Warring States hybrid warrior-figures on the coffin of the Archer Lord of Zeng and to the horned snake-eating deity for Month 12 (last month in the year, the end of winter) painted on the Chu Silk Manuscript.40 Yang Yi suggests that the zhenmushou was purposely set at the head of the deceased to help the spirit emerge from the coffin and then transport the spirit to the land of the immortals.41

Michael Loewe studied the zhenmushou, or “Antler and Tongue,” figures in a seminal essay on the nature of hybrid creatures and their religious role as intermediaries between the worlds of man and beast. He linked the Chu examples to the tales of half-man half-beast flesh-consuming creatures depicted in the Shanhaijing, a text he suggests likely described sets of ancient paintings.42 These figures, seen replicated in other paint-ings, such as the month deities on the Chu Silk Manuscript, the Zeng

Yali 2001; Yang Yi 2004, 54-55. For a summary of scholarship up to 1994, see Loewe 1994, 38-54.

37 Li Jiahao 1998, 16-17, the term is found in the Xinyang tomb inventory text strips 2-018, 2-03.

38 See also Demattè 1994.39 A bronze beast figure was found in a tomb in Xinzheng, Henan.40 So 1999.41 Yang Yi 2004, 55.42 Loewe 1994, 38-54, esp. 41.

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Hou Yi and Mawangdui coffins, and elsewhere are interpreted by him and other scholars as symbols of transformation from a mortal to an immortal existence.

Elizabeth Childs-Johnson’s studies of the composite images that make up the monster-masks often carved in ancient jades and cast into bronzes show an evolution from an earlier hunting imagery that represented meta-morphosis from the human to the god state through hybrid animal forms, used possibly in shamanistic rituals involving ecstatic flight.43 She shows how the Zhou-period jade figurines picturing winged fetal-like men with bird masks and animal features represented shamans in the act of trans-formation so that they could better traverse a wild territory filled with beasts (as depicted on the surfaces of bronze sacrificial vessels).44 We find a Chu version of these early Zhou forms in the Tianxingguan Tomb 2 burial: a bird man carved out of wood stands on the head of a bird with outstretched wings. This red, yellow, and blue 66-cm-high painted sculpture was originally set into a base or perhaps held in the hand. This figure was found in the eastern chamber along with the mortuary feast preparations and the musical instruments. Curiously, the zhenmushou in this tomb was discovered in the northern section of the western chamber along with a “spirit-tree” (a carved antler-like branch with birds and beasts painted with red stripes).45 The placement of symbols of transformation or transcendence in the northwestern corner of the tomb reinforces the idea that the zhenmushou or “Antler and Tongue” hybrid figure played a key role in the movement of the spirit beyond the tomb.

Basic physical aspects of the zhenmushou—its long tongue and ant-lers—not only link it to other images of flight (trees, birds) but to the consumption of flesh, either of the mortuary sacrifice as suggested by Loewe and others, or, as I would suggest, of the corpse itself. Paola De-mattè suggests that a hanging tongue symbolized death (as one might find on a corpse) while antlers symbolized life, potency, and flight (as they grow, fall off, and are renewed).46 John Major also sees in the hybrid forms, many of which are pictured eating snakes, a phallic potency that when combined with “animal power” could also symbolize “the shaman’s state of spiritual transformation.” 47 He links Chu depictions of the hunt

43 Childs-Johnson 1994, 1995, and 1998.44 See her forthcoming book “Metamorphic Imagery in Ancient China.”45 Hubeisheng Jingzhou bowuguan 2003, 184-87, M2:102 and M2:240, ills. 156, 160.46 Demattè 1994, 388-96. Antlers were used as wings on wooden phoenix stat-

ues, see ibid. 393.47 Major 1999, 132-33.

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in funerary art with “the rituals of exorcism and sacrifice” and notes that ritual hunts by state rulers, particularly during the Han period when Five Phases cosmology was strongest, became symbols of properly ordered seasons and calendars.48 The emergence of the deceased soul from its decadent body into the symbolic hunter clearly required the aid of hy-brid beasts. The fact that these beasts could consume dead flesh and fly was no doubt critical to the transformation process. The antlers may also symbolize the protective function of the zhenmushou as it accompanied the soul through the wilderness.

Mark Lewis has suggested that the antlered creature may represent Chi You ( ), a complex mythical character used as a guardian and evoked during funeral processions and annual exorcisms. He notes also that earthly wrestling matches between warriors wearing horns simulated the cosmic match between the ancestor god, the Yellow Emperor (

), representing cosmic order, and Chi You, representing chaos. As a suppressed demon, Chi You then became a minister of the Yellow Em-peror playing the role of shaman or exorcist.49 Michael Loewe suggested (concerning the Han-period reenacted battle) that Chi You represented a repressed political order and the conflict between water and metal, agri-culture and metal-working.50 While we cannot be sure that these meanings fit the pre-Han Chu context, the use of images of the horned creature to tame wild forces—worshipped as a “cult hero” in Han times—can be traced back to the Chu.51

An inscription found on the wooden base of a zhenmushou figure dating to about 600 BCE provides yet another layer of interpretation, one that we can connect to various other items worn and carried by Shao Tuo’s spirit and placed into the northern compartment. This particular wooden figure was found in a Spring and Autumn period east-facing tomb in the elite Chu burial ground of the Wei family in modern Xichuan, Henan, and bears the inscription: 52 “The zuyi of Jun Cuo of Hua53 of the Junior Line of the Zeng House” ( ).

48 Major 1999, 134-35.49 Lewis 1990, chapters 4 and 5. The association of Chi You with metallurgy may

conflate this spirit with Zhu Rong, a Han fire god and mythical Chu ancestor (see Lewis 1990 and Cook 1994).

50 Loewe 1994, 236-48.51 Loewe 1994, 242-43.52 Cao Guicen 1992b; Li Ling 1993. The original text has not been published. Li

Ling 1999, 146, identified Hua as a place in or near Xichuan, Henan, in the upper Han river valley.

53 Li Ling suggests this is a Zeng woman who married into the Wei family. Tomb

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The discovery of Zeng-owned objects in a Chu burial ground is not unexpected, as the two groups intermarried and lived side-by-side in southwestern Henan and northwestern Hubei up through Warring States times. The east-facing Chu tomb to which I refer belonged to a young woman, possibly Jun Cuo of Zeng, and the wooden figure belonged to her father.54 Li Ling, who provides the transcription, suggests that the last two characters are the name of the beast itself.55 The graph in in-scriptions is typically read as “ancestor, sending-off ritual” zu or “altar table, chopping block” . A number of readings is possible, but none particularly revealing. If the term began with “ancestor” then, given the flexibility of possible readings for the second graph, the name might be read as zuyi “Ancestor Yi,” zushe “ancestor base” ( ) or even zu-zhi “Ancestor Administer, Director of Sending-off ritual” ( ).56 The word yi is explained by the Shuowen as “to plant (grains)” (and sometimes written ) suggesting zuyi was a plant, like a spirit-tree. Planting grains or trees suggests, in turn, a link to the mythical Zhou ancestor and god of agriculture, Hou Ji and ultimately the earth god and altar (she , an unlikely loan since it was anciently pronounced with a *-ag final instead of *-at, as with ), upon which trees were planted. The word she as a noun might refer to something that is set up for display or as a trap (for animals). It could also refer to equipment prepared for battle or a journey. The word zhi is usually used as a verb meaning to catch or ad-minister. As a noun it might refer to a close associate. The Tianxingguan Tomb 2 placement of the zhenmushou with a spirit-tree supports the link between the two, the importance of their shared wooden and antler-like natures to their roles in the tomb, as well as the reading of the name of the beast itself as something along the lines of a plant.

We do know, at least, that the Zeng zhenmushou, a hybrid tiger-faced dragon-bodied figure with long tongue and antlers, was associated with

1 may have belonged to her husband, Ke Huang of the Wei family. I transcribe the graph as cuo based on my reading of a similar graph in Wangshan strip no. 58. The graph for Hua was originally written with the element

54 Her personal name is unknown. A set of bells in her tomb belonged to a Shou, a son of (the place) Hua , possibly her father. Tomb 1 belonged to Ke Huang of the Wei family, most likely her husband; see Cao Guicen 1992a; Li Ling 1993.

55 Li Ling 1993.56 Qiu Xigui 1998; 2002, 25, n. 29, has shown that yi was often used for she. The

word zhi was graphically similar to yi, phonetically homophonous with another read-ing of the graph. Without a copy of the original inscription it is impossible to make a judgment.

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ancestral spirits by its location among bronze sacrificial vessels and mu-sical instruments. The fact suggests its having a role in the spirit feast that was set out in the compartment that the deceased’s spirit most likely first visited. Because mortuary feasts were mentioned in the context of ancestor worship in bronze inscriptions of this period,57 we can assume that the feast was prepared for the deceased young woman either to greet her ancestors, or as a simulacrum of the sending-off feast that took place in the shrine. If her father was already dead, then the invocation of his name and the familiarity of objects such as the bells may have served to guide his spirit to the feast. Perhaps these ancestral spirits had a role in guiding the deceased in her new role, and the wooden figure (a symbol of metamorphosis—as defined by Childs-Johnson—and change) had a role in helping her transform into the hybrid form of a spirit (a safer form in which to travel the wilds). In this sense, the figure functioned like the later spirit guide or “name banner” (mingjing) described in the Liji as banner identifying the deceased and giving them an image (xiang).58 As a guide, with its taotie-like face and long tongue, perhaps it acted also as the zouyu beast described in Chapter Two that consumed dead flesh.

It is striking that Shao Tuo’s Baoshan tomb did not have a zhen-mushou. Shao instead was provided a dragon-headed staff with a protrud-ing tongue (see figure 10c). Short bird-headed staffs have been found in tombs since the Western Zhou period and occur in the Xincai Chu tomb. A staff used in the funeral of a father was called “dried stalk crutch” (cha-zhang ) and was made out of bamboo.59 In other Chu tombs, such as Mashan Tomb 1, a dragon figure, carved out of a dried root with legs like bamboo and covered with snakes, frogs, dragons, and phoenixes, took the place of a beast figure in the eastern compartment.60 These dragon-like figures may have functioned like the staff in the fundamental sense of acting as an aid for movement. Shao Tuo was so physically disabled by the time of his death that perhaps a crutch was believed more appropri-ate than an animal. On the other hand, the staff may have had demon-quelling or dragon-controlling powers, as suggested by the painting on a zither in Xinyang Tomb 1 of a robed figure holding a leaf-shaped staff before an upraised dragon. The notion of demon-quelling through hunt-

57 Cook 1993, 1996, and 1999.58 Peng Hao 1988; Wu 1992, 116-17, understands the Mawangdui painting to be a

Name Banner; Zhou Wenbai 1992, 227-28.59 Yili “Sangfu”; see discussion by Ping Shaolong 1991, 505.60 Hubeisheng Jingzhou diqu bowuguan 1985, fig. 43; see also Cook and Major, 167.

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ing with bows and arrows is depicted elsewhere on the zither,61 as it is on the Mawangdui inner coffin (where pale “earth goats” or horned goat-like dragons cavort among the clouds, shooting and fighting birds, snakes, and other enemies with a variety of weapons).62 These images suggest a role protective of the wandering spirit. We return then to the problem of the name of the dragon-like fig-ure found in the early Chu tomb in Henan. If we take the graph to be referring to the nature of the beast, a dried root, then we are left with the idea that yi (or a loan) referred to the beast itself, some-thing that could be planted or grasped and which like a staff could aid in the movement of the deceased as well as quell (or trap) demons.

Shao Tuo was equip- ped with carved an imal ornaments (worn per-haps on his head like antlers) and his dragon staff; he was also clothed in phoenix-covered silk garments. The hybrid nature of his ornaments and clothing symbolizes transformation, as do zhenmushou statues and two specific sculptures from the eastern compartment of Tianxingguan Tomb 2. One (possibly a drum stand) depicts the same phoenix/duck/griffin-like bird taking off from atop a tiger crouched like a frog (figure 16). His

61 Henansheng wenwu yanjiusuo 1986, fig. 2-3; also Cook and Major, pl. 1, fig. 8.562 They also play musical instruments and ride spirit dragon-horses. Besides these

goat-like dragons, there are people, birds, geese, and tigers depicted (see Hunan sheng bowuguan, vol. 1, 15-24).

Figure 16. Bird Taking Off from Crouching TigerFront view; 117 cm high; red and yellow lacquer painted over wood with antlers. The bird arches its head upward. It has two sets of wings, one of antler, and one lower set of wood (here greatly foreshortened). The tiger is crouched, tail and head up. Howling, it is ready to spring. After Hubeisheng Jingzhou bowuguan 2003, fig. 157.

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tail is up and he is read to pounce, just as the bird is ready to fly with its antler wings. The other sculpture shows a hybrid bird-man riding on top

of the bird (figure 17).Besides bird imagery, there is also

the symbol of a flying chariot. Shao Tuo would have ridden a feather-decorated chariot. Although four chariots are listed in the Tomb In-ventory Text, they were represented only symbolically in the tomb as pieces.63 The chariots mentioned in the text include a high-sided char-iot, a leading war chariot, a guard chariot, a chariot or cart with spoke-less wheels, and a good luck char-iot. The text claims that the chariot with painted leather sideboards was “for the burial.” Chen Wei suggests that the chariot or cart with spoke-less wheels was for actually carrying the coffin,64 so the first chariot may have carried grave goods, perhaps the feasting vessels and food baskets. The second chariot was equipped with clothing and hunting equip-ment—bags for carrying animals as well as for weapons—and was most likely the chariot Shao Tuo would ride for the hunt. It is this chariot and its contents that are summarized on

63 Perhaps as with the bent dagger-axes found in late Western Zhou tombs, the descendants did not want to give ghosts the power to move or do harm.

64 Chen Wei 1996a, 184-85, 187.

Figure 17. Bird-Man Flying on a BirdSide view; 65.6 cm high; red, yellow, and blue outlines over a black lacquered wooden sculpture. Probably originally set into a base, such as one of those depicted in figure 4, above. After Hubeisheng Jingzhou bowuguan 2003, color pl. 43.

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a bamboo plaque placed in the northern compartment with Shao Tuo’s personal articles. The “good luck” chariot decorated with feathers and silks may have been the chariot intended for his ascent into heaven.65

The image of the chariot as the conveyor of the deceased in his pas-sage to Heaven is reflected in the Four Regions layout of the tomb. It was also reflected in the late Warring States-early Han game board and instrument used to calculate auspicious time, the “canopy and chariot,” kanyu . This instrument is also known as a shi board (mentioned in Chapter Two) and likely related to the liubo chess-Parchesi-like game-boards and the TLV mirrors (found in tombs of this same time period). Generally the design was a partitioned square with diagonals with con-centric registers of décor, a design it shared with the coffin ends and sculpture bases discussed in Chapter Three (see figures 3 and 4). The divination instrument for calculating time consisted of a moveable round plate in the center of a square. This round plate, “the canopy,” symbol-ized Heaven and the square board, “the chariot,” symbolized Earth. The layout of this instrument reflected the contemporary idea of the cosmos as a “Canopy Heaven” (gaitian ).66

The fact that Shao Tuo’s tomb, square on the bottom and round on top, and the layout of its contents symbolized geomantic coordination reveals a concern with the cosmic positioning of the tomb between Heaven-and-Earth and its role as a vehicle for transport to Heaven. In some sense Wu Hong and other scholars are right. The journey to Heaven and across time occurred metaphorically within the symbolic cosmos of the tomb, one governed by Taiyi (Grand Unity) in his Yang and Yin forms up above and by the Lord of the Earth below. But it is in the nature of a symbol to be but a reflection of the larger perceived reality; the chariot pieces within the chariot tomb within the chariot cosmos.67 There is no question that soul flight required the symbolic or “real” leaving of the earth. It traveled, like the sun and moon, a chariot or a bird, and moved from tree to tree westward, through “the Gate of Darkness,” 68 and into the void of Heaven.

65 See Kong Yingda’s commentary to the Liji, discussed in app. 2, n. 145.66 Major 1993, 32-43; Loewe 1994, 112-20.67 See Porter 1996, 69-75, discussing mythical symbols with regard to the “image”

or “sign” (xiang) in divination, where the divination text or implement of manifesting the cosmos is cosymbolic with the cosmos itself.

68 From John Major’s translation of Huainanzi, chap. 4, “The Treatise on Topog-raphy,” sect. vi, “Beyond the Nine Provinces” (Major 1993, 162).

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The movement of time was a critical concern for the Chu. As Deborah Porter noted for the mythic cosmic tour of King Mu, the transforma-tions evident in hybrid animals represented time’s passage, particularly with regard to seasonal cycles, and were marked with drums or musical performances.69 Chu mortuary evidence confirms both points. The hy-brid animals are linked by their antler imagery to drums and trees (which like bird migrations mark the passage of seasons, such as we see in the painting analyzed in Chapter Four). We know from the divination strips that season and the calendar were critical aspects of the performance of sacrifices to the spirits. The coordination of an auspicious time for the performance of a ritual event in an auspicious space is a basic ele-ment of ancient Chinese religious practice datable back through the Shang period.

The symbolism of flight in Shao Tuo’s tomb—dragons, phoenixes, and chariots—confirms the Chu (and perhaps general Warring States period) belief in travel of the transcendent spirit after death. For the Chu elite, the journey to Heaven seemed to begin with the movement inside the tomb—visits with familiar objects, preparation for setting off, and performance of a feast for ancestral spirits. The deceased then rides out of the tomb, leaving behind the attendants and his corpse, follow-ing his spirit guide through barbarous lands filled with wild animals and monsters. Finally he ascends—either in a chariot, on a horned dragon, or as a horned dragon—into the astral landscape of ancestral spirits and cosmic deities.

The travel of the spirit found its earthly counterpart in tales of ancient kings and sages who traveled west to find immortality, enlightenment, and then, much much later, in Buddhist texts. The dangers encountered were numerous and varied by name in different texts written at differ-ent times and places. The beasts and people they encountered, like the spirits and ghosts in the Shuihudi Day Book, were often not what they seemed. Beasts were really ghosts and people were really beasts. They talked, cursed, and changed form. Many in the Shanhaijing, for example, were described as in a hybrid state, neither beast nor man. They had to be fought, bribed, or transformed. Shao Tuo’s ritualists began this pro-cess during his illness. The record of three years worth of sacrifices and prayers to the spirits and ghosts considered most likely to harm Shao Tuo was buried with him as proof that consequently many spirits owed

69 Porter 1996, 79.

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something back. This debt then could be carried into the otherworld as a form of protection against the spirits but also perhaps as a method of winning their approval and help during the difficult journey (should his personal dragon fail him).

The natural wilds were also dangerous. To the west of Jiangling were high mountains. The Yangzi River cut through them just south of Jiang-ling, and the Han River, to the east of Jiangling, swung north and then west into mountains. Covered with forest and emerging out of the semi-tropical southern lands, these mountains were no doubt filled with vari-ous types of cat, bear, snake, boar, and ape. They were also inhabited by peoples who had been pushed to the fringes of Chinese civilization by the expanding Han societies. Their ancient customs and odd dress no doubt made them seem half-human to the elite of Jiangling. So, the physical journey to the west, no matter whether Shao Tuo traveled in the natural or the supernatural realm, was rife with peril.

Where exactly his spirit resided once he had made it up to Heaven is unknown. The ancestral spirits since ancient time seem to look down at their living descendants from “up above.” They were depicted as bright, shining, and greatly “manifest” with light (pixian ) like stars or “lu-minous” (ming ) like the sun and moon. The transformed spirit in the Mawangdui painting, likewise, was up among the stars (although rep-resented as part snake). It seems likely that ancestral spirits were envi-sioned, like many later Daoist spirits, as moving among the stars, if not actually being stars.

CHAPTER SIX

EPILOGUE

For Shao Tuo, it may have been his diviners and the keepers of his calen-dar, rather than the tomb designers, who were most steeped in the early symbolism of Five Phases. Shao Tuo’s tomb, like the Chu Silk Manu-script, was oriented according to the symbols of a traditional cosmologi-cal scheme,1 but the texts reveal, as scholars have shown for the Chu Silk Manuscript, a notion of fluid cosmic movements and an emphasis on temporal correlation inherent in the Five Phases system.2

The directional aspect of either the Four Regions or Five Phases is mostly missing from the Baoshan divination text. The Tomb Inventory text, on the other hand, does provide some hints of directional correla-tion with Yin and Yang influences. For the “Dining Room,” the eastern compartment that would correlate to spring and the element wood, the text lists metal sacrificial food vessels and implements as well as a variety of baskets filled with dried, steamed, and roasted birds, fish, fowl, and pig meats, along with honey, sweet grains, and various onions and fruits.3 The strips describing the clothing and furniture for “ Traveling ” (found in the western and northern compartments) were actually placed in the southern compartment, associated with summer and fire. The metal and wooden sacrificial vessels, implements, tables, and stools for the “Great Sacred Plot” (the tomb itself) are described on strips placed in the eastern section of the southern compartment but actually seem to relate to items placed in the eastern compartment. Military items—chariot and horse décor and weapons—are described on strips placed in the southwestern section of the southern compartment. Most of the military equipment was placed in the southern compartment, which accords with the concept of the south as linked to fire. Only one strip with writing, perhaps a stray, and two blanks were placed in the western compartment (it is interesting

1 According to Allan 1991, Shang tombs reflected the Four Regions; see also A. Wang 2000, 39-46, and Keightley 2000, 82-84.

2 A. Wang 2000, 112.3 For a summary of fruits and vegetables found in Chu tombs, see Lin Qi 1988.

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that the early Wangshan tomb of Shao Gu had no western compartment at all). This compartment, filled with food and furniture, seems not to have had any special correlation to metal or Yin. In some sense, it is just an extension of the more personal northern compartment. The admin-istrative and divination texts were placed in the northern compartment, as was a bamboo plaque summarizing the strips that described the mili-tary items. Clearly, the eastern and southern compartments, both Yang compartments, were considered the most auspicious directions for the Tomb Inventory Text. The texts found in the northern compartment, the most Yin and associated with winter and water, appear to have been for Shao Tuo’s personal testimony to the spirits of his identity, the merit accumulated during his lifetime, as well as the powers invoked to protect him. Overall, Five Phases correlations do not seem to have informed the tomb construction.

In his survey of Chu tombs, Guo Dewei notes that elite tombs in the Jiangling area tended to face east.4 Divination and tomb inventory texts have been found in the highest-ranking tombs in the family burial grounds of Baoshan, Wangshan, and Tianxingguan in the Jiangling re-gion and in Xincai, in southeastern Henan. The Baoshan tomb complex in Jingmen consisted of five tombs roughly aligned north to south. The earliest and the most southerly but the highest ranking, that of Shao Tuo, was located farthest east. Wang Shan tombs, including two large tombs, had ramps facing east. The complex of five large mounded tombs at Tianxingguan (referred to locally as the “Five Mountains”) arches east to west along the northern rim of Chang Lake. The tomb farthest east, belonging to Fansheng, Lord of Diyang (d. circa 361-340) is the largest. Although the ramp of his tomb faces south towards the lake, the em-phasis on the east is still clear.5 The Xincai tomb belonging to Cheng, Lord of Pingye (d. circa 340), also faced east. There seems to have been a strong Chu belief in the east as the most auspicious direction in which to begin the move into the afterlife, a concept that fits neatly with later Yin-Yang Five Phases associations.

The fourth-century BCE Jiangling area tombs and texts associated with Shao Gu and Shao Tuo reveal a world in transition—moving from the certainty of a clear Four Regions scheme to a world of Yin-Yang natu-ral agents, one not yet settled into a clear Five Phases scheme. In addition to the concept of these dark and light (positive and negative) forces, we

4 Guo Dewei 1995, 30.5 Guo Dewei 1995, 114-20.

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have touched upon another bifurcated concept that informed the tomb construction, the journey beyond the tomb, and even the nature of the deceased’s relations to his spirits and to his own body. This is the con-cept of Inner and Outer, one that can be traced back to the early Zhou period and one that represented the movement of oneself at death from the deepest inner core out through the many walls of body, coffin, and tomb into the Wild. Each step involved protective measures against the invasion of one’s self by destructive agents. The spirit emerging from the tomb was particularly vulnerable and, like the hunter or warrior, had to be protected by a chariot and magic.

By the fourth century BCE, religious practice in the Jiangling region of ancient China was a complex affair combining ancient practices of ancestor worship with an expanding pantheon of natural forces. Records of the sacrifices and prayers by diviners reveal a busy annual calendar concerned with expelling evil from sanctified inner spaces. Physical sites of ritual began to evoke a mimesis of metaphorical inner ritual spaces. Ancient rituals of purification were in the process of evolving their inner meditative counterparts. While we dare not label such practices by the names of later high religions, such as Daoism, the local roots of some later cult practices can clearly be traced back to the Jiangling region.

The Baoshan and Wangshan texts and tombs—through their design and contents—allow us an unparalleled glimpse of the multi-layered and evolving nature of early Chinese belief. Some of these rituals, such as exorcism to remove evil spirits causing illness, can be traced forward to modern times.6 Others, such as the practice of equipping the tomb for spirit flight—particularly by the antiquated method of dragon and phoe-nix chariot—are lost in modern China. So, too, gone is the naïve image of a cosmos reducible to a one-dimensional wheel of revolving natural forces. On the other hand, the idea that human spirits perpetually inhabit another dimension is found among people even in post-industrial societ-ies.7 We hear of modern day ritualists who “channel” or act as “mediums” to “parallel universes.” Modern science has erased the natural spirits of antiquity that inhabited every thing and every place and replaced them with sub-atomic size energies operated by the laws of quantum mechan-ics.8 The anthropomorphized and animal forms of these ancient energies,

6 See Strickmann 2002.7 For a discussion of the ubiquitous concept of ghosts from ancient times to the

present in China, see Poo 2000, 4. 8 See the ruminations of Templeton 2000, 76-79.

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preserved in our museums as relics of primitive religion, act as poetic reminders for us now of the human need for visions into the unknow-able present and future. Death, for the ancient Chinese, was a colorful passage into the timeless present.

APPENDIX ONE

BAOSHAN DIVINATION TEXT

The texts here (strips 197-249) contain variant graphs and compound, or joined, graphs (hewen ), that is, cases of two graphs written as one. Some occurrences of these matters are discussed in the notes, below. For the sake of readability and printing practicalities, all transcriptions are given in modern characters. For a closer examination of each graphic variant, please see the excavation report (Hubeisheng Jingsha tielu ka-ogudui 1991b, vol. 1, 364-99); the separate volume by the same authors (Baoshan Chu jian); and Chen Wei 1996a, 231-42. The earliest transcrip-tion was by Hubei, but in the last several years Chen Wei, Li Ling, and others have provided corrections. These latter are incorporated in the transcriptions, below.

For the purposes of analytic presentation and for correlation with references in my notes and in Tables 3 and 4, the bamboo strips for the Baoshan Divination Texts, below, are grouped in the following way. Each subsection corresponds to a single year; in that year there occurred “divination events,” marked here with numbers, such as “I.1” or “V.2.” A “divination event” occurred on a single day and usually involved a single question, but in some cases it involved more than one diviner and method.

Phonetic reconstructions of words created by Li Fanggui are signified by the sign “L* ” and placed inside brackets (see Schuessler 1987).

Images of the original bamboo strips are adapted from Hubeisheng Jingsha tielu kaogudui 1991a, plates LXXXVIII-CIX. Although the ma-jority of them are relatively clear, many of the photographic backgrounds had become darkened with age, making reproduction here difficult. Thus some of these images have been edited to reveal a bit more of the graphs on the bamboo strips.

In some cases where a graph was written with a variant semantic ele-ment but the meaning is uncontested, I simply have transcribed using the modern graph. Otherwise, I follow the Hubei transcription by Liu Binhui

, Peng Hao , Hu Yali , and Liu Zuxin .

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Event I: 318 BCE Early Summer

Strips 197-198; I.1

During the year when the Song guest,1 Sheng Gong Bian, paid an official visit to Chu,2 on the month3 Xingyi,4 and the day Yiwei [32],5 Gu Ji6 used

1 The word ke “guest” referred to an official retainer from another state. 2 This event is unknown in the transmitted literature. 3 The graphs for zhi yue constitute one compound graph. These are marked in the

original with two little lines to the lower-right of the graph. In later strips such graphs are sometimes written in compound form, sometimes not. The case is similar with zhiri, which is not written in compound form in this strip, but is in some later strips.

4 The original graphs for this month are written with the phonetic element xing and a semantic tian underneath; and yi was written as shi (a common graph used for yi in inscriptions) with a element. The Yunmeng Qin strips version has transcribed xingyi . In the Zuozhuan (Zhuang 4 and Huan 12; in Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 49, 196), it was transcribed as jingshi . It is the first month of summer. There is controversy over whether this month or Dongyue , the first month of spring, was the first month of the lunar year. Liu Binhui shows how the Chu months named in the Baoshan text match with those mentioned in the Yunmeng Qin bamboo text (see Hubeisheng Jingsha tielu kaogudui 1991b [hereafter referred to as Hubei],

baoshan divination text 155

the baojia method 7 to prognosticate for zuoyin8 Tuo:9 From Xingyi month up to10 the next Xingyi month, while going in and out (of court) to serve the king, by the end11 of the year, will his person12 not have incurred any [spiritual] blame?13 (Gu Ji) divined about it: the long term14 prognosis is auspicious, yet (Tuo) seems to have some personal concerns,15 hence the matters he intends (to accomplish) are somewhat slow to come about. (Gu Ji) performed an exorcism to get at its source.16 He willed17 and beat

vol. 1, 537-42; see also Wang Hongxing in Hubei, vol. 1, 529-32; Li Ling, 2000, 273, 279), which indicates that the lunar year began in Dongyue. Chen Wei 1996a, 16-20, argues that that annual sacrifice must have begun in the first month of the lunar year and that the Chu year must have begun in summer rather than spring.

5 Day 32 in the sixty-day ritual cycle used since the Shang period; see Keightley 2000, 37-39.

6 The diviner’s name was written with the semantic element min underneath the phonetic gu. Shao Tuo had a number of dealings with members of the Gu clan; see strips 3, 162, 170-73, 176 passim in the legal text; Hubei, vol. 1, 349-64; Chen Wei 1996a, 206-31.

7 Hubei, vol. 1, 52, n. 339, reads baojia as baoshi , a type of stalk divination. Li Ling 2000, 281, suggests that baojia may have been similar to baogui , a type of plastromancy.

8 There were a number of yin officials in the Chu government with a large range of functions; see Cook 1995 and Blakeley 1999.

9 Tuo’s full name is Shao Tuo, a descendant of Chu King Zhao (r. 515-489). 10 Hubei, vol. 1, 364, originally transcribed the graph as geng . Chen Wei 1996a,

231, transcribes this graph as di , which he reads as shi (“to go to”) based on the E Jun Qi tally readings. Li Ling 2000, 280, transcribes the archaic graph with a over a , read as jiu in the phrase ... ... (“from A to B”). I follow Chen.

11 Chen Wei 1996a, 152-53, and others interpret zuisui to refer to jisui (as it is written later in the text), a sacrifice performed at the end of one year and the begin-ning of the next. He Linyi 1993 and Xia Lu 1993, 83, read this as yi (“to change”). Li Ling 2000, 280, understands the line as the fulfillment of one year up through to the end of the next year,. I follow Li here.

12 The graphs for gongshen are written as a compound graph.13 The word shang was sometimes written with the “heart” element. The word

shang is commonly found in divination questions, so I read it as in the sense of “ought he have,” “perhaps he has,” or “will he have.” The word you is uniformly written throughout the manuscript. I have substituted the regular form for reading clarity.

14 The word heng can mean “constant, persevering, the usual.” A line in the Lunyu, “Zi Lu” (Zhuzi jicheng, vol. 1, sect. 13, 295), reads: “Southerners have a saying: ‘If a man is without perseverance (wu heng ), he can’t be a medicine man (wuyi ).’” Since heng here modifies the prognostication, I take it to mean “in the long term,” the larger prognosis, in contrast to smaller immediate concerns.

15 These concerns may refer to problems at work or those concerning his illness.16 The word gu is read as gu (“source, cause”). The word here translated as

“exorcism” is written in a number of ways throughout the text, making it clear that “exorcism” was in a sense the same word as “curse” but used in reverse, that is, against the ghost. The primary phonetic (pronounced dui, yue, or rui in modern Chinese) is found with a variety of semantic elements ( , , , ) and is used both as transi-

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the (the ghost),18 releasing (Shao Tuo) from human harmful influences.19

tive verb and noun. As a noun it is used in the place of sui (“curse”); see strip no. 235; Zeng Xiantong 1993, 416; Kong Zhongwen 1997, 587-89. The verbal form zhui [L*tju�dh] appears as early as the oracle-bone inscriptions as a sacrifice to ancestors to remove curses that Luo Zhenyu associated with Chu divination; see Li Xiaoding 1974, vol. 3, 0927-32. It� and Takashima 1996, vol. 2, 78-79, follow Wang Guowei’s interpretation that this was nai, a sacrifice involving smoke, although they do not find Wang’s arguments fully convincing. The verbal form of the graph has been a source of controversy. Li Ling 1990, 83, reads as duo [see tuo ; L*thuat] (“to get rid of ”) based on the appearance of the phonetic element in the Shuihudi Day Book texts:

(“get rid of the inauspicious [influences])” and (“get rid of the spectral [influences] and curse the inauspicious [influences])”; I find Li’s readings convincing. In a recent publication, he further explains that the word was written as duo (“to force”) in classical texts and was defined in the Shuowen with the graph (“to remove by force”); Li Ling 2000, 277, 283. He shows how the same graph can be read duo in the Baoshan administrative text where person A forcibly removed his wife (presumably from the home) (strips 93, 97), and suggests that evil was removed through rang “a sacrifice to expel evil influences” (see Karlgren 1972, no. 730g). I follow Li Ling’s suggestion that this was an exorcism ritual. Hubei, vol. 1, n. 352, sug-gests that the word was shui [L*sthjuat], based on the phrase in the Zhouli, “Chun Guan, Da Zhu” (explanations of the sacrifice names are from Zheng Xuan’s com-mentary): “(The Grand Invocator ) handles the six prayers used to unify the spirits: 1. lei sacrifice (to the High God), 2. zao ( “stove”) sacrifice (to ancestral spirits), 3. hui sacrifice (to nature spirits to exorcise illness and premature death), 4. rong sacrifice (ying or

to astral and earth spirits to overcome natural disasters), 5. gong sacrifice (by beat-ing the drum and chanting to nature spirits), 6. shui sacrifice (invocations to nature spirits) (Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 14, j. 49, 2-5).

17 The graph is read by Hubei, vol. 1, 53, n. 353, in the verbal sense gui (“to make sacrifices to ghosts”). Chen Wei 1996a, 31-32, and Li Ling 1995, 76, read it as si

in the sense of “to wish” as found in the Shijing and the early Western Zhou oracle bones (see also Lin Xiao’an 1999, 21), or “to command.” I follow Chen and Li.

18 Peng Hao reads these two words as the single term guigong , based on the Zhouli passage on drummers, guren : “with a road drum, drum at the ghost feast” (Hubei, vol. 1, 560; see Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 6, j. 23, 85). The Zhouli commentary (see n. 16, above) suggests that referred to the use of drums in prayer. See also Xun-zi 21.8, where foolish people beat drums and boil piglets to cure illness (Knoblock 1988, vol. 3, 109). The word gong is written also as in the Baoshan text, a variant that appears in Chu bronze inscriptions meaning or (“to present offerings”). Li Ling 2000, 292, notes that gongjie , like gongduo and gongxu (for gongchu

), used later in this text, all referred to exorcism. The word gong was a method for dispelling illness-causing demons; see the Zuozhuan, Cheng 10, in Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 230. Harper 1998, 169, notes that a graph he reads as si in the Mawang-dui medical manuscripts refers to “exorcistic beating.” I suspect it refers to the same word. In manuscript MS I.E.125, Harper 1998, 263, translates a passage where a pa-tient is being treated for an illness caused by his parents and son, presumably dead, and “the officiant hits the patient twice seven times” and commands the patient to rise and the inguinal swelling to desist. For comparison to Shao Tuo’s illness, see slips 242-44, below.

19 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 354, suggests a reading as the sage god Great Yu . Chen Wei

baoshan divination text 157

(Gu Ji) divined about it: “It is still auspicious.20 During this period21 there will be happiness.”

1996a, 173-74, understands it as a loan for hai “harmful influences or presences.” Human harmful influences might be understood as curses put on Tuo by other living or dead people. Li Ling 2000, 293, notes that hai is written in a similar manner in the Chu Silk Manuscript and the Shuihudi rishu text.

20 Hubei and Chen Wei both read the graph shang (written here without the “heart” semantic) as dang . Transmitted texts have no examples of either shang ji or dang ji but the Zhouyi “Xiang” text for hexagram 12 (Pi ), line 5 ( ) does have the phrase : “As for the big person’s auspicious fortune, it is po-sitioned just right.” This is used in contrast to bad fortune (xiong ) where a person is “not positioned correctly” (see the Xiang text for line 3 of hexagram 10 (Fu ). Another possible reading for shang, however, might be shang as in hexa-gram 58 (Dui , line 4): “In calculating the measure of pleasure ( > > ), [the diviner] is not yet assured; as for illness [ > “scabies”], there will be happiness.” There are various readings for this sentence, see Gao Xiang 1984, 332-33; Chen and Zhao 2000, 516-18. Given the Baoshan texts, we might instead understand dui to stand for a type of exorcism, see n. 16, above. The word jie might also be read as “large,” as in a major illness.

21 Possibly referring to the month or the season.

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Strips 199-200; I.2

During the year when the Song guest, Sheng Gong Bian, paid an official visit to Chu, on the month Xingyi, the day Yiwei, Shi Beishang prognos-ticated for zuoyin Tuo using the xunmin method:22 From Xingyi month up to the next Xingyi month, by the end of the year, has his person not incurred any [spiritual] blame? (Shi Beishang) divined about it: the long term prognosis is auspicious, yet it seems that (his affairs) outside are in trouble and what he aimed to accomplish has been slow to come about. (Shi Beishang) performed an exorcism to get at its source. (Shi) per-formed secondary prayers23 to King Zhao24 with a black water buffalo25

22 Most likely a type of plastromancy; Li Ling 2000, 281. However, the graph for min was written with wood semantic element on top which could be confused both with the grass semantic and a type of stalk divination.

23 Li Ling 2000, 286, reads the original graph written as neng with a yu el-ement on top as yi , for (“next [day, month, year]”), taking the phonetic as yu [L*gwjagx]; whereas yi was [L*r�k] not neng [L*n��; *gwj�m]. Li 2000, 286, notes that the graph also appears in the E Jun Qi tallies and understands the word to refer to “next year’s sacrifice.” Hubei, vol. 1, n. 359, reads it as si [L*sdj�gh] (“successive

baoshan divination text 159

and set it out as a food offering. (Shi) performed secondary prayers to the Accomplished Lord Pingye, Chun of the Sire Wu line, Yin of the Sima line, Jia of the Sire Cai line 26 with a black gelded pig27 for each and with wine and food. (Shi) performed secondary prayers to (Shao’s father’s)

generations”), which fits well with the sacrificial object, the successive generations of Shao Tuo’s patrilineal ancestors. However as the sacrifices to ancestors do seem to occur in cycles whereby they are first initiated or proposed (ju), then seconded (yi), and finally recompensed (zhai), I follow Li Ling and read an yi sacrifice as a second-ary or follow-up sacrifice.

Neng does have the sense of sacrifice or prayer, as in nengfu (in an early Western Zhou bronze inscription) and neng shi guishen (in the Shujing). For the former, Guo Moruo explains neng as a loan for hong (“great” [L*gwr��]) (Zhou Fagao et al. 1974, 10.1321), but it is more likely that the archaic graph was a simplified version of yi. The graph was confused with ying [L*ri�], most likely a loan for other words read ying meaning “to present as offering” or representing a type of sacrifice used in prayer to astral and nature deities in the Zhouli (see n. 16, above). In the same Zhouli passage the prayer sacrifice zao was recorded as requiring sacrificial animals and big drums. E. Childs-Johnson in the unedited version of her 1995 article related the yi graph to the use of animal masks by shamans during the Shang and Zhou period to invoke ancestral spirits (see also 1998, and her recent manuscript).

24 Zhao is written Shao, proving that Shao Tuo’s surname was really Zhao and derived from Chu King Zhao (r. 515-489 BCE), Shao Tuo’s ancestor. I use Shao in this manuscript simply to avoid confusion for readers familiar with other Baoshan scholarship.

25 Hubei, vol. 1 (n. 361), explains zhi [L*sthj�k] (and the graphic variant in strip 222) as equivalent to te [*d�k], with the meaning of “single, one.” This read-ing follows Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 268, for the Wangshan divination manuscript. Li Ling 2000, 290, follows Hubei but notes also the occurrence of te as a reference to a male or three year old animal. Since strip 248 uses the yi (“one”) to enumerate sac-rificial animal offerings and a number of the animal terms seem to indicate male-ness and age, then another reading seems likely. In the Zeng Hou Yi tomb inventory text, strip nos. 54 and 81, the graph zhi appears with the graph yi as a compound graph and is understood as a complex form of dai , read as dai “black” (Hubei-sheng bowuguan 1989, vol. 1, 515, n. 108). In a Western Zhou bell inscription, zhi in a compound graph with the element underneath and is read as chi “gleaming,” a description of the horns or knobs on the face of the bronze bell (Ma Chengyuan 1988, vol. 2, 192-93).

For the use of wild buffalo and domesticated oxen in Shang ancestor worship, see Childs-Johnson 1998, 23-26. For an exploration of the use of oxen in Chu sacrifice, see Ke Heli 2003b.

26 For a discussion of wen “accomplished” as an epithet for ancestral spirits, see Cook, 1990, 105-07. Pingye, Wu, and Cai were all place names. The titles jun “Lord” and gong (“[deceased-] elder, Sire”) represented powerful members of the political elite of those places. The diminutive zi (“child, son”) represented that the person was a direct descendant of those members. The personal names of these ancestors of Shao Tuo were Liang-“Good,” Chun-“Spring,” Yin-“Sound,” and Jia-“Home.” Zhao Tuo’s mother remains nameless. Each name is followed by a punctuation mark, a single dash, on the lower right of the last graph in the names.

27 See Chen Wei 1996a, 175-76.

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wife28 with dried meat from a black pig.29 If (Shao’s) intended matters are quickly achieved, all (sacrifices) will be quickly repaid.30 (Shi) divined about it (saying): “Auspicious. During a Xiangyue31 or a Xiaxi (month), there will be happiness.”

28 This is a reference to the wife of Cai Gongzi Jia, Shao Tuo’s mother, not his own wife. In strips 201-04, sacrifices are performed to Cai Gongzi Jia, referred to as New Father, followed by sacrifices to New Mother.

29 The word read xi was written with the semantic element and the phonetic . Li Ling 2000, 290, suggests that this was dried pork.

30 Regarding, sai as in saidao “repayment prayer,” Hubei, vol. 1 (n. 370), notes the Shiji “Fengshan shu” passage “In winter, perform the sacrifice of the repayment.”

31 The graphs for Xiangyue are written as a compound graph. After the word ji “auspicious,” the scribe placed a punctuation mark.

baoshan divination text 161

Strips 201-203 (see overleaf for 204 and 202-back)

appendix one162

Strips 201-204 and 202-back; I.3

661666>611611

[space]

[back] [space]

During the year when the Song guest, Sheng Gong Bian, paid an official visit to Chu, on the month Xingyi, the day Yiwei, Ying32 Hui prognos-ticated for the sire, zuoyin Tuo, using the yangshi method: From Xingyi month up to the next Xingyi month, while going in and out (of court) to serve the king, by the end of the year, has his person not incurred any [spiritual] blame? Hexagram Yu turns to Hexagram Dui.33 (Ying Hui) di-

32 The graph for ying was written with the semantic element indicating a place name and no “heart” element as found in the modern form.

33 The scribe (clearly a different one than for the previous two sections) added a punctuation mark after jiu and before the hexagrams. The hexagrams are written side by side as a single graph and read from right to left. The second hexagram is broken into two groups of three sixes and eights representing broken or Yin lines and ones representing unbroken or Yang lines, hence 661666 is Yu no. 16 in the transmit-

baoshan divination text 163

vined about it: the long term prognosis is auspicious, yet there is some concern regarding his person, moreover34 his promotion in rank35 is slow. (Ying Hui) performed an exorcism to get at its source. (He) performed the proposition prayer36 to the Earth Lord of the Residence with one black ram. (He) brought offerings37 and prayed to New Father38 Jia of the Sire Cai line with dried meat from a black pig, wine and food, and presented food offerings.39 (He) brought offerings and prayed to New Mother with

ted Yijing, but is Jie in the Guicang (see Wang Hui 2003, 81). Line 5 in the Yijing re-fers to a prognostication about illness, to prevent the subject from dying for a long time. The Guicang omen concerns a yellow bird. 611611 corresponds to Dui , no. 58 hexagram in the Yijing. Line 4 also refers to illness getting better. In the Zuozhuan, the second hexagram is used to specify the changing lines of the first hexagram; see Rutt, 154-55, 173-201, for a discussion of examples in Zuozhuan and Guoyu. Yin lines 2,5, and 6 of Yu changed to Yang lines in Dui.

34 The graph for qie is written with a common variant, an added “tiger” above, with a below instead of the .

35 The word jue is written with the graph for que .36 Hubei reads the basic graph [L*ragx], often written with a semantic el-

ement underneath, as ju [L*kjagx], an animal sacrifice offered to the king men-tioned in the Zhouli, “Tianguan, Shanfu”: wangri yiju “on the day for kings, present one ju sacrifice.” The commentary explains that wangri either as a dawn court feast or as a reference to shuowang , the dark phase of the moon. Ju is explained as shasheng shengzhuan (“killing a sacrificial animal and filling [sacrificial ves-sels] for eating”) (Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 2, j. 7, 83). Li Ling 2000, 286, suggests that it is the initial sacrifice offered to the gods with the saidao “repayment” offered later. In the Shijing, Daya ode “Yunhan” (Mao no. 258), which bemoans a situation of drought and famine, we read “mishen buju ” (“There are no spirits who have not been given sacrifices”). A parallel line in the next verse further supports the Hubei read-ing of ju as a sacrifice: “mishen buzong ” (“There are no spirits who have not been respected in the temple”). I understand it as a proposed sacrifice; n. 23, above.

37 Hubei reads ke [L*khak] “to pay respects to (a deity).” Western Zhou bronze inscriptions often used the variations of the graph for ge (read as ge [L*krak] “to come, make come”) to describe the movements of the king (into the temple) or the spirits (up and down). It appears in the term zhaoge (“to illuminate and bring down”), as verbs referring to the use of the bronze vessel or bell to bring joy and happiness to the ancestral spirits. It is seen in later texts written as jia (see the Xing zhong, of late-middle Western Zhou period, Ma Chengyuan et al. 1986-90, vol. 3, 192, no. 267, and 193, no. 268). The Baoshan graph has the semantic element , typically an indication of religious activity, which in the context involves the presen-tation of animal sacrifices. This meaning is also suggested by the Shijing phrase “lai jia lai xiang ” (“bring on the animal offerings [for recently deceased ances-tors?], bring on the feast [for all spiritual and mortal guests])” (Mao no. 302, “Lie Zu,” in the Shang Song section). I understand ke here to refer to paying one’s respects to the deity with animal sacrifices.

38 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 379, reads xin as qin (“closely related”). It referred to a new, recent, or “close” ancestors.

39 The scribe punctuated the text with a backwards style comma after each set of food sacrifices (I use semicolons or periods).

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a fattened piglet,40 wine and food. (He) performed the initial sacrifice and prayed to the lian’ao of Dongling41 with a fattened piglet, wine and food. Turning to42 Shi Beishang’s exorcism, (he) presented secondary prayers to King Zhao with a black water buffalo and food offerings; presented secondary prayers to Accomplished Lord Pingye, Chun of the Sire Wu line, Yin of the Sima line, Jia of the Sire Cai line each with a black gelded pig, wine and food; and to the wife with dried meat from a black pig, wine and food. Ying Hui prognosticated and said: “Auspicious. In the com-ing ninth month [Tuo] will enjoy a promotion.” Generally these are (the exorcism prayers of) Fu 43 which have already been completed in turn. [The sacrifice] to the New Father is already complete. [The sacrifice] to the New Mother is already complete.

40 This line is followed by a backwards comma style of punctuation. Hubei, vol. 1 (n. 381) reads the original graph as shi with either the element , defined in the Shuowen as a three-year-old pig. Chen Wei 1996a, 176, reads the graph as zhong , which he claims is a pig less than one year old. He suspects that the terms feizhong

(strips 201, 225), zhongshi (strips 209, 227), and zhongzhong (strip 244) all refer to the sacrifice that I translate as “fattened piglet.” In every example, except strip 227, the recipient is the lian’ao of Dongling, possibly a male relative outside of Shao Tuo’s direct male ancestral lineage. In strip 227, the recipients are Shao Tuo’s brothers.

41 Dongling is a place name and lian’ao an office title. For the discussion of a Dongling dagger-axe discovered at E Wang city in southern Hubei, see Cook 1990, 508.

42 The graph written with the element with the element underneath is gen-erally left without a modern transcription. Scholars suggest that it functions like the word yi “to move,” found later in the text, and refers to “enacting” rituals begun earlier by other diviners (see Zeng Xiantong 1993, 418-19; Liu Xinfang 1998, 35; Kong Zhongwen 1997, 59; Chen Wei 1996a, 155-59). I suspect that the graph might be read as (chuan or zhuan) (“to transmit, move onward, turn around”), or as the Shuowen explains for zhuan, “to move in succession (yun ).” The graph in an older form is found in a similar position in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions when a new topic is introduced. See, for example, the Shi Cai ding where the king, after proclaiming Shi Cai’s merits, turns then to a narration of his own merits (Ma Chengyuan, 1988, vol. 3, 135). For an example in Shang oracle bones, see Lin Xiao’an 1999, 15.

43 This is a complex graph consisting of a “bamboo” element over a phonet-ic, either shi or fu over a element. Hubei, vol. 1, n. 384, claims that cai [L*tsh�gx] is the phonetic and that the word should be understood as a type of bian

, a comprehensive sacrifice to all spirits. Chen Wei 1996a, 159, understands this to be the name of a diviner (perhaps read Shi or Fu?) whose sacrifices and prayers were initiated in a month earlier in 318 BCE before the Baoshan records begin. The cycle of his work was completed by Ying Hui in Xingyi month. I follow Chen.

baoshan divination text 165

Event II: 317 BCE Early Spring

Strip 205; II.1

[space]

During the year when the guest from Eastern Zhou, Xu Ying, presented a gift of ritual meat at Zaiying,44 on the month Dongxi, 45 the day Guichou (50), (the ritualist) performed the sec-ondary prayer to King Zhao with a black wa-ter buffalo, making a great minced meat soup and a food offering of it. “Have Shao Ji make

44 Possibly a reference to the city Ying in Jiangling; see Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 248.45 Li Ling 2000, 279, considers Dongxi to be the first month of the year. Chen

Wei 1996a, 5-7, argues that Xingyi is the first month and Dongxi towards the end of the year. He places strips 205-206 after strips 216-17, but before strips 218-19, which fall between the divinations and records of sacrifice and the divinations re-garding Tuo’s illness. I leave them in the original Hubei order for ease of reference to the original strips.

appendix one166

sacrificial preparations,46 and, when finished with the prayers, good for-tune will arrive.”47

46 The graph for li was written with the semantic element in this line and as in strip 224. For the reading of li as (to prepare sacrificial offerings), see a similar reading in the late Warring States period Chu inscriptions of E’ling Jun (see Cook, 1990, 556-58). Shao Ji was probably a relative of Shao Tuo. Lai 2002, chapter 5, reads the word li as wei claiming that Shao Ji acted in a ceremony in which he acted as a magical substitute for Shao Tuo, something along the lines of the Corpse ritual.

47 In this strip, there are three compound characters: zhiyue, zhiri, and zhiniu. The scribe punctuated the phrase that mentioned the continued prayers to King Zhao with short dashes after zhiniu, dazang, and kuizhi and with a backwards comma at the end of the strip (after fu). The scribe punctuated the next strip (no. 206) with short dashes after each name and after kuizhi but a fatter dash (rather than a backwards comma) at the end of the strip.

baoshan divination text 167

Strip 206; II.2

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During the year when the guest from East-ern Zhou, Xu Ying, presented a gift of ritual meat at Zaiying, on the month Dongxi, the day Guichou, (the ritualist) performed the secondary prayer to the accomplished Lord Pingye, Chun of the Sire Wu line, Yin of the Sima line, Jia of the Sire Cai line, with a black gelded pig each and made food offerings of them. “Have Shao Ji make sacrificial prepa-rations, and when finished with the prayers good fortune will arrive.”

appendix one168

Strips 207-208; III

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During the year when the guest from Eastern Zhou, Xu Ying, presented a gift of ritual meat at Zaiying, on the month Yuanxi,48 the day Guimao (40), Ke Guang using the changxiao method49 prognosticated for zuoyin Shao Tuo: as for his infirmity, the symptoms are in his abdomen, along with shortness of breath. Could there still be no cause for blame? (Ke) divined about it: the prognosis is auspicious, but something is not fin-

48 Chen Wei 1996a, 1-9, takes this as the last month of the year. Li Ling 2000, 279-80, takes it as the third month.

49 Li Ling 2000, 281, reads it as and takes it to be a type of plastromancy.

Event III: 317 BCE Late Spring

baoshan divination text 169

ished. (Ke) performed an exorcism to get at its source.50 (Ke) sent sacri-fices51 to the Earth Lord of the Wilds of one male pig, and to the Earth Lord of the Palace of one male pig; (Ke) performed the repayment sac-rifice to the Walkway with one white dog,52 wine and food. (Ke) divined about it saying: “Auspicious. In Xingyi (month) (Tuo) will then have an audience with the king.”

50 The graph duo here is written with a semantic. 51 Hubei, vol. 1 (n. 395) takes the graph written with around the phonetic

( [L*tsj�gh]) to be a loan for jian [L*dzi�nh] (“prepared dishes”). The word ci [L*sdj�g] is phonetically closer and has some graphic similarity. It is unlikely that

ci refers to a spring sacrifice at this time. Kong Zhongwen 1997, 583, notes that ci is found with sai in the Zhouli and Shijing and hence may have referred specifically to food offerings presented as repayment to deities for good fortune.

52 The graphs for baiquan are written as a compound graph. The scribe punctu-ates with a dot after the end of each sacrifice (after both gu and after jiushi) and at the end of the entire entry.

appendix one170

Strips 209-211; IV.1

166811>666811

Event IV: 317 BCE Midsummer

baoshan divination text 171

53 This scribe used the word zhi for (“to bring forward [gifts])” instead of gui .

54 Li Ling 2000, 279, claims this is the fifth month, the middle of the summer.55 Li Ling 2000, 281, suggests this is a stalk method.56 Yang line 1 in Yijing hexagram 41 (Sun ) changes to a yin line in no. 19 (Lin ).

The hexagrams are written with a very slight break between each trigram. The bottom trigram for each is the same and written with an 8 instead of a 6 (as recorded by Hu-bei). There do not seem to be any clear omens related to illness in the Yijing text.

57 Chen Wei 1996a, 161-62, explains that Shi Tai referred to Taiyi when the star associated with the god was not visible. The graph for tai was written with an added

element.58 The graph for quan was written with the element instead of the element.

This is a common simplification in this text.59 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 409, reads the word written with either the grass or bamboo

element (gao [L*kagw] or hao [L*agw]) as a loan for jiao [L*kragw] (“sacrifice outside the walls of the city”); see also He Linyi 1998, 292. For the use of hao as a loan for jiao in the Shang oracle-bones, see Li Xueqin 1998a, 189-94.

60 For ming zu (where zu is for ), see n. 16, above. Both ming and zu were writ-ten with the element.

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During the year when the guest from Eastern Zhou, Xu Ying, presented a gift53 of ritual meat at Zaiying, on the month Xiayi,54 the day Yichou (2), Wu Sheng prognosticated for zuoyin Tuo, using the chengde method:55 while busy serving the king from one Xiayi month to the next, by the end of the year, has his person perhaps incurred any [spiritual] blame? (Wu) divined about it: the long term prognostication is auspicious but with some con-cerns regarding his person and home, moreover things outside (his person and home) are not going smoothly. Hexagram Sun moves to Hexagram Lin.56 (Wu) performed an exorcism to get at its source. (He) performed the proposition prayer to Occluded Grand Unity57 with a whole gelded pig. (He) performed the proposition prayer to the Earth Altar (spirit) with a whole58 pig’s worth of dried meat. (He) performed the proposition prayer to (the spirit of) the Residence Walkway with a white dog, wine and food. (Wu) moved on to Ying Hui’s exorcism and performed the repayment sacrifice and prayed to the lian’ao of Dongling with a fattened piglet, wine and food, presenting it outside the city walls.59 He willed and beat the (the ghost), releasing (Shao Tuo) from Numinous Specters,60 and

appendix one172

(Wu) removed61 (the curse) from his home. Wu Sheng divined about it saying: “Auspicious, for three years you will be without [spiritual] blame, and will have great happiness, and the nation will know of it.”62

61 The reading of the original xu as chu is accepted by Li Ling 2000, 292, af-ter an unpub. 1992 ms. by Liu Zhao.

62 This section is the work of yet another scribe, one who does not use compound characters. In the phrases before the hexagram, he punctuated with a small dash after “auspicious” (ji) and “residence” (gongshi) but a hook-like period after the word xun right before the hexagrams. He punctuates again after each sacrifice (after the words huan, xi, jiushi and jiaozhi) and after the words mingzu, gongshi, and “auspicious” (ji).

baoshan divination text 173

Strips 212-215; IV.2

appendix one174

[space]

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During the year when the guest from Eastern Zhou, Xu Ying, presented a gift of ritual meat at Zaiying (317 BCE), on the month Xiayi, the day Yichou, Gu Ji prognosticated for zuoyin Tuo using the baojia method: while busy serving the king from one Xiayi month to the next, by the end of the year, has his person perhaps incurred any [spiritual] blame? (Gu) divined about it: the long term prognostication says auspicious but with some evil63 affecting the king’s affairs as well as some concerns regarding his person. (Gu) performed an exorcism to get at its source. (He) moved on to the former Fu’s (exorcism) and performed the repayment prayer to Grand (Unity) with one circlet of a jade pendant; to Earth Lord,64 Con-troller of Fate, and Controller of Misfortune, each one small jade circlet; to Grand River, one circlet of a jade pendant;65 to the Two Children of Heaven,66 each one small jade circlet; to Wei Mountain,67 one pierced jade pendant piece. (Gu) moved to Ying Hui’s exorcism and performed the repayment prayer to the Earth Lord of the Residence with one ram. (Gu) moved next to Shi Beishang’s exorcism and up to the third month of Autumn performed the repayment prayer to King Zhao with a black water buffalo and made food offerings of it; the repayment prayer to the accomplished Lord of Pingye, Chun of the Sire Wu line, Yin of the Sima line, Jia of the Sire Cai line with a black gelded pig for each and

63 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 412, reads the original ya as .64 The title for Earth Lord (houtu) is written in the Chuci, “Zhao hun,” where,

according to Wang Yi’s commentary, it refers to a god of the underworld (see Yuan Ke 1985, 165).

65 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 413, reads beiyu as peiyu .66 Because the Er Tianzi appear in the text between water and mountain spirits, it

is likely that the “Two Children of Heaven” are nature spirits (see Chen Wei 1996a, 169-70). In the Zuozhuan, Cheng 10, in Chunqiu jingzhuan yinde, vol. 1, 230, the two demons that caused illness were called Er Shu ; in the Huainanzi there are the Er Huang (10.12b) and Er Shen (7.1a) who represent Heaven and Earth, Yang and Yin (see Yuan Ke 1985, 6).

67 The original graph for this mountain is transcribed by Chen Wei 1996a, 170, 233, as wei with either a “mountain” ( ) or “human” ( ) semantic to the left, as it is on this strip. There is a spirit named Wei mentioned in the Shanhaijing, “Hainei xi jing,” who assisted a man named Erfu to kill a spirit with a snake body and human head. Erfu was tied up and hobbled in Shushu mountain, possibly in Shaanxi province. In other versions, Wei was exiled to the mountain (see Yuan Ke 1985, 158-59).

baoshan divination text 175

made food offerings of it; the repayment prayer to New Mother with dried meat from a black pig and made food offerings of it; Gu Ji divined about it and said: “Auspicious.” [The sacrifices to] the Grand Unity, Earth Lord, Controller of Fate, Controller of Misfortune, Grand Water, the Two Children of Heaven, Wei Mountain have all been completed. “Dur-ing this period there will be happiness.”68

68 The scribe in this section may be the same as in the previous section, except that the substitution of zhi for gui in the first line of the previous section is curious. As in the previous section, the scribe did not use any compound graphs. He punc-tuated with dashes after “spiritual blame” (jiu) and “auspicious” (ji) in the first half but with a triangular period after the phrase yi qi gu tuo zhi. In the section where Gu Ji turned his attention to Fu’s exorcism, the scribe punctuated with a dash between the phrase “each one circlet of jade (to the Earth God and Controllers of Fate and Disaster)” and ends Fu’s section with a large upside down tadpole like comma before recording Gu Ji’s work with Ying Hui’s exorcism. Dash-like punctuations in the Shi Bei shang section separate the sacrifices to King Zhao, the patrilineal ancestors, and the mother as well as the individual names of the patrilineal ancestors. There is a space after “auspicious” instead of a dash, but dashes are found after each name in the list of spirits that follow and after each of the final phrases regarding the completion of their sacrifices and their bringing happiness.

appendix one176

Strips 216-217; IV.3

During the year when the guest from Eastern Zhou, Xu Ying, presented a gift of ritual meat at Zaiying, on the month Xiayi month, the day Yichou, Ke Jia prognosticated for zuoyin Tuo using the changxiao method: while busy serving the king from one Xiayi month to the next, by the end of the year, has his person perhaps incurred any [spiritual] blame? (Ke) divined about it: the long term prognosis is auspicious but with some concerns regarding his person, moreover things outside are not going smoothly. (Ke) performed an exorcism to get at its source. (He) performed the proposition prayer to Chu founders Lao Tong, Zhu Rong, and Yu Yin69

69 Yu is originally written with the “woman” semantic and two , one on top of the other as in the phonetic for rong in Zhu Rong. Li Xueqin has shown how the name stands for the mythical Chu ancestor Yu Xiong mentioned in the Shiji (xiong is a Qin substitute for the Chu title yin). Based on the fact that the Baoshan version of the name was written with a graph featuring the “woman” semantic, I earlier theorized

baoshan divination text 177

with a ewe each. He willed and beat (the ghost), releasing (Shao Tuo) from the Victims.70 Ke Jia divined about it and said, “Auspicious.”71

that this figure might in fact be a goddess, such as Nügua (see Cook 1994, where I discuss Li 1988). An argument against this idea would be the fact that when the divin-ers sacrificed to Shao Tuo’s recently deceased ancestors, his mother was mentioned separately after the patrilineal ancestors.

70 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 426, and Li Ling 2000, 293, read gu .71 Once again this section has no compound graphs. Punctuation begins and ends

after the words “auspicious.” In between the dashes follow the phrase yi qi gu tuo zhi, after the sacrifice to the three Chu gods, and after the beating of the Bugu ghosts.

appendix one178

Strips 218-219; V.1

During the year when the guest from Eastern Zhou, Xu Cheng, presented a gift of ritual meat at Zaiying, on the month Cuan,72 the day Jiyou (46), Xu Ji used the baojia method to prognosticate for zuoyin Zhao Tuo re-garding his [illness], which had gone below the heart and afflicted73 [him] with shortness of breath.74 The long term prognosis is auspicious, and

72 This month is equal to the eleventh month, called cuanyue in the Yunmeng strips.73 Ji can also refer to symptoms of an illness and to something happening quickly

(perhaps palpitations?).74 Qi is written with the phonetic ji [L*kji�dh] and the semantic element “fire” .

Event V: 317 BCE Midwinter

baoshan divination text 179

on a Jiayin day (51) the infirmity will improve and heal,75 but there is a curse. The Grand (Unity) sees a tiger-jade.76 (Xu) performed an exor-cism77 to get at its source. (He) took a jade disk and a tiger shaped jade, selected a good month and day, and sent them (to Grand Unity). (He) moreover made a present78 of a strung jade disc and speedily presented it. (He) satisfied the Earth Lord with one male pig;79 performed a repay-ment prayer to the Walkway with a white dog; sent cap strings to the Two Children of Heaven. “On a Jiayin day present cooked food sacri-fices80 in Piyang.”81

75 The original graph has the phonetic qie [L*tshjagx] and is understood by Hubei, vol. 1, n. 428, Chen Wei 1996a, 154, and others as a loan for read chai or cuo [L*tshrad] (“to get over an illness”). Hubei elsewhere reads a variant as “to stop” (Hubei, vol. 1, n. 428 and n. 462). Li Ling 2000, 285, suggests it is a loan for cuo “cured.”

76 I wonder if this might describe the position of the Taiyi star, perhaps its move-ment to the west? Or perhaps the use of a divination board with Tai Yi acting like the Big Dipper as a indicator of omens.

77 The words “curse” and “exorcism” are written exactly alike, but in this section both with an added element.

78 The word shang should be read as (“to present”).79 For jia , see Chen Wei 1996a, 176.80 Chen Wei 1996a, 33, notes that ( [L*dugh]) in the Fangyan is a dialect word

that Guo Pu reads as zhu . Chen consequently reads the graph written with the se-mantic element and the phonetic as zhu [L*t(r)jugh], which he explains as the behavior of the upper class to the lower class. Li Ling 2000, 203, suggests that it is a type of exorcist ritual, possibly read as dou “to struggle with” (see strip 42 where Hubei reads the graph written with the semantic and the phonetic as ) to be performed at a certain place where evil resides. He makes the point that in the last entry, when it is clear to the diviners that Zhao Tuo is dying despite their efforts, the record notes that the location of the evil is in the end unknown. The phrase ji-dou appears repeatedly at the end of late Warring States-period Chu bronze in-scriptions, where it is read as jichu by Zhu Dexi and Qiu Xigui 1973, a title for a ritual food service officer, in charge of preparing the sacrifices to be presented in that particular vessel (see Cook 1990, 523-55; Cook 1995, 264-69).

81 A Chu place name that appears also in Shao Tuo’s administrative records. The graph read pi is written exactly like ying but the “ ” element was replaced with a “ ” element. This scribe used one compound graph (zhisui in the first line) and very little punctuation. He put dashes after Earth God, Two Heavenly Children, and at the very end.

appendix one180

Strip 220; V.2

During the year when the guest from Eastern Zhou, Xu Ying, presented a gift of ritual meat at Zaiying, Cuan month, Jiyou day, Ke Guang used the changxiao method to prognosticate for zuoyin Zhao Tuo regarding his [illness], which had gone below the heart and afflicted [him] with short-ness of breath. The long term prognostication is auspicious. “On a Geng

baoshan divination text 181

or Xin day there will be improvement.82 The sickness83 will quickly heal. Do not present cooked food sacrifices in Piyang. Perform the same ex-orcism (as before).”84

82 Geng and Xin days are mentioned in the Shuihudi Day Book as metal days, good for recovering from illness (see A. Wang 2000, 111). Li Ling 2000, 284-85, notes that you jian appears in the Qin Day Book text as “better” and is noted in the Fangyan as a southern Chu term.

83 The phonetic element for bing in this graph is fang . The graph is followed by the double dash to show that it is repeated. This is also the case in strip no. 223 in the following section.

84 Chen Wei 1996a, 156, suggests this refers to all the exorcisms performed that day. The scribe for this section may be the same as for the last. There is almost no punctuation except at the end after Piyang and after “exorcism” (written the same as sui “curse” and tuo “to exorcise” in the last section). This section was translated only slightly differently in Harper 2001, 104.

appendix one182

Strips 221-222; V.3

During the year when the Eastern Zhou guest, Xu Ying, presented sac-rificial meat at Zaiying, on the month Cuan, the day Jiyou, Nong Qiang85 used the shaobao method86 to prognosticate for zuoyin Shao Tuo: his in-firmity is advanced, the nature of his infirmity is an affliction of the heart, shortness of breath, and loss of appetite. During Cuan month, could there be no sickness? Nong Qiang divined about it: the long term prognosis is auspicious, but there is a curse.87 It appears to be the New Royal Father who died prematurely. (Nong) performed an exorcism to

85 For typographical convenience I transcribe this diviner’s name according to the graph’s probable phonetics. Nong was originally written with the semantic element , and Qiang with the elements above and (also a possible phonetic).

86 Li Ling 2000, 281, takes shaobao as a type of plastromancy.87 While “curse” is written with the same elements as in the previous section, the

writing style is different, indicating a different scribe. This scribe distinguishes between the words for “curse” (sui) and “perform an exorcism” (tuo) by adding the element only to the word “curse.” This is done also in the following section, strip no. 223.

baoshan divination text 183

get at its source. (He) offered the proposition prayer (to the New Royal Father) with a black water buffalo, making food offerings of it. “Those who die prematurely rely upon the tasting sacrifice88 of sacrificial ani-mals.”89 Nong Qiang divined about it saying, “Auspicious.”

88 Following bronze inscriptions from this period, I read the graph written over a element as chang (“tasting ritual”). It is not clear whether it refers to an autum-nal sacrifice at this time or not.

89 The graph sheng is read as .

appendix one184

Strip 223; V.4

Qu Yi repeated it and, using the tongge method, prognosticated for zuoyin Zhao Tuo: the infirmity has advanced. The infirmity is a heart afflic-tion,90 with shortness of breath and loss of appetite. Could there be no sickness? (Qu) divined about it: the long-term prognosis is auspicious, but there is a curse apparent. Turning to Nong Qiang’s exorcism, Qu Yi divined about it saying, “Auspicious.”91

90 The heart xin might also generally refer to the chest.91 The only punctuation in this section is at the very end, after “auspicious.” The

scribe seems to be the same as for the previous section.

baoshan divination text 185

Strip 224; VI. 1

During the year when the guest from Eastern Zhou, Xu Ying, presented a gift of ritual meat at Zaiying, Cuan month, Bingchen day (53), the of-ferings of the gongyin 92 were put in the charge of the ritualist Xia and

Event VI: 317 BCE Midwinter

92 Gong in gongyin and in gong “to present sacrifices” is written with a element

appendix one186

(as for the graph on both strips) instead of as in no. 224. This is common in Chu bronze inscriptions as well.

93 The scribe for this section and the next (no. 225) are clearly the same person. There is a tendency to write in compound graphs (jiri in both, jisui in the second) and the script is more compact. Neither section is punctuated except at the very end of each section with a triangular period.

Wei Zhuang to offer a proposition prayer on behalf of the son, Zuoyin Tuo, to New Royal Father Sima Yin with a black water buffalo made into food offerings. Zhuang dared make the sacrificial preparations; finishing the prayers, (he) brought about (a complete) lifespan.93

baoshan divination text 187

Strip 225; VI.2

During the year when the guest from Eastern Zhou, Xu Ying, presented a gift of ritual meat at Zaiying, Cuan month, Bingchen day, the ritual-ist Xia and Wei Zhuang, charged with presenting the gongyin offerings, offered a proposition prayer on behalf of Zuoyin Tuo to Fa,94 of the

94 Li Ling 2000, 290, reads the original graph written with four with a cross shape between them, as fa. This is attested in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions. I understand the zi of his name, Zifa, to refer to his being a “son of ” a hereditary Chu official line.

appendix one188

Dongling lian’e line, who died prematurely; (they used) a fattened piglet and presented it as a sacrifice outside the city wall.95 Zhuang dared make the sacrificial preparations; finishing the prayers, (he) brought about a (complete) lifespan.

95 See n. 59, above.

baoshan divination text 189

Event VII: 316 BCE Early Summer

Strips 226-227; VII.1

[ ]

.

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During the year when the Grand sima Nao Hua led the Chu national army to save Fu,96 on Xingyi month, Jimao day (16), Gu Ji used the baojia method to prognosticate on behalf of zuoyin Tuo: while busy serving the king from one Xingyi month to the next, at the end of the year, would his person perhaps incur any [spiritual] blame? (Gu) divined about it: the long term prognostication is auspicious, but there are some concerns regarding his person. (Gu) performed an exorcism to get at its causes.

96 An event recorded in the Zhanguoce, “Zhaoce,” 20.2a: Nao Hua rescued Yan . Fu ( [L*pj�gx]) is believed to be a loan for Hao ( [L*hmagwh]), another name for Yan. Nao Hua is also mentioned in the Zhanguoce, “Chuce,” 17.3a. For dat-ing, see Xu Shaohua 1989.

appendix one190

(Gu) offered the proposition prayer to the Occluded Grand Unity with a complete gelded pig; offered the proposition prayer to the brothers without descendants Shao Liang, Shao Cheng, and Xian He Gong97 with a fattened piglet for each, wine and food, and presented them outside the city wall. Gu Ji divined about it saying: “Auspicious.”98

97 Close male relatives, perhaps brothers, of Shao Tuo’s who died without sons. I follow Li Ling 2000, 290, reading as he.

98 The scribe for this section tends to write the words zhisui, zhiyue, and zhiri as compound graphs. He begins to punctuate only after the phrase yi qi gu tuo zhi and then after the sacrifice for Tai Yi, to separate the names of the brothers, after the sacrifice to the brothers and at the very end after “auspicious.” There is a hook-like comma and a space before the brothers are named.

baoshan divination text 191

Strips 228-229; VII.2

166116>165866

During the year when the Grand sima Nao Hua led the Chu national army to save Fu, on Xingyi month, Jimao day, Chen Yi used the gongming method99 to prognosticate on behalf of zuoyin Tuo: while busy serving the king from one Xingyi month to the next, at the end of the year, has his person perhaps incurred any [spiritual] blame? Hexagram Gu goes to Hexagram Bo.100 (Chen) divined about it: the long term prognostication is auspicious but with some concerns regarding the home. (Chen) exor-cised it according to its cause. (Chen) offered the proposition prayer to

99 Li Ling 2000, 281, takes gongming to be a stalk method.100 Yang lines 4 and 5 of Yijing hexagram 18 (Gu ) became Yin lines in hexa-

gram 23 (Bo ). The sixes are written almost as downward slants. There seems to be no effort to distinguish trigrams. The hexagram 166116 is called Yi in the Guicang. Neither text seems to preserve lines related to illness.

appendix one192

the House Walkway with one white dog, wine and food. (Chen) through his will beat (the curse) and removed it from the house. Wu Sheng101 di-vined about it saying, “Auspicious.”

101 It is unclear why Wu Sheng would perform Chen Yi’s confirmation divination here. The calligraphic style has once again changed. There is no punctuation at all except for the compound graphs of zhiyue or zhiri.

baoshan divination text 193

Strips 230-231; VII.3

During the year when the Grand sima Nao Hua led the Chu national army to save Fu, on Xingyi month, Jimao day, Guan Beng used the changling method102 to prognosticate on behalf of zuoyin Tuo: while busy serving the king from one Xingyi month to the next, at the end of the year, has his person perhaps incurred any [spiritual] blame? (Guan) divined about it: the long term prognostication is auspicious, but with some concerns.

102 Li Ling 2000, 281, takes this as a type of plastromancy.

appendix one194

(Guan) performed exorcism to get at its cause. (Guan) willed and beat the curse,103 sending the selected cap and belt104 to the South. Guan Beng divined saying, “Auspicious.”

103 The words “to exorcise” and “curse” are both written with the element but sui (“curse”) has been simplified a bit. This is clearly the same scribe as the section above. The calligraphic style is the same, the same graphs appear as compound graphs, and there in no punctuation except at the end.

104 Wearing the cap and belt was official garb and could be a term for an official. However, in this case, since the South, like the North in other divination texts (e.g., Wangshan no. 86) was a spirit that required sacrifices and since we see clothing sac-rificed elsewhere in this text (strip 244), I believe that it is not an official that is be-ing sent to the South (which would be an odd break in this highly formulaic text) but clothing accessories being sent to a spirit.

baoshan divination text 195

Strips 232-233; VII.4

611661>161161

During the year when the Grand sima Nao Hua led the Chu national army to save Fu, on Xingyi month, Jimao day, Wu Sheng used the chengde method105 to prognosticate on behalf of zuoyin Tuo: busy serving the king from one Xingyi month to the next, at the end of the year, has his person perhaps incurred any [spiritual] blame? Hexagram Sui goes to Hexagram Li.106 (Wu) divined about it: the long term prognosis is auspicious, but

105 Li Ling 2000, 281, takes this as a type of stalk divination.106 Yin lines 1 and 4 of Yijing, hexagram 17 (Sui ) became Yang lines in 30 (Li

). Yang line 2 of Sui became a Yin line.

appendix one196

with some concerns regarding his bedroom107 at home. (Wu) performed exorcism to get at its source. (Wu) offered the proposition prayer to the Lord Earth of the Palace with a ram. (Wu) offered the proposition prayer to Walkway with one white dog, wine and food, and presented it outside the city wall. (Wu) performed a slaughter sacrifice108 to the Grand Gate with a white dog. Wu Sheng divined about it, saying, “Auspicious.”

107 I follow the reading of this graph given in Xu Zaiguo 1998, 83.108 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 458, reads the graph written with a semantic over the element

as simplified for fa , a loan for “to dismember.” Shang oracle bone inscriptions recorded dismemberment sacrifices (see It� and Takashima 1996, 252-54).

baoshan divination text 197

Strips 234-235; VII.5

During the year when the Grand sima Nao Hua led the Chu national army to save Fu, on Xingyi month, Jimao day, Xu Ji used the boling method109 to prognosticate on behalf of zuoyin Tuo: busy serving the king from one Xingyi month to the next, at the end of the year, has his person perhaps incurred any [spiritual] blame? Xu Ji divined about it (saying): “Auspi-cious, there is no blame and no curse.” 110

109 Li Ling 2000, 281, takes boling to be a type of plastromancy. 110 “Curse” is distinguished from “exorcise” by the addition of the element. In

this section as in the previous two sections, there is no punctuation except to indicate the compound words zhiyue and zhiri and at the very end of the sections.

appendix one198

Strips 236-238; VII.6

During the year when the Grand sima Nao Hua led the Chu national army to save Fu, on Xingyi month, Jimao day, Gu Ji used the baojia method to prognosticate for zuoyin Tuo: already his abdomen and chest are af-flicted, with coughing111 and no appetite.112 He hasn’t gotten better in a long time, yet for a speedy recovery113 is there nothing to be done? (Gu) divined about it: the long term prognostication is auspicious, but the af-fliction is difficult to heal. (Gu) performed exorcism to get at its source. (Gu) offered the proposition prayer to the Grand (Unity) with one gelded ram; to Lord Earth, Controller of Fate with one ewe each; offered the

111 It is possible that “rising qi” might refer instead to a fever. Coughing or gasp-ing for breath would seem to be a likely step after “lessening of qi” which I take to mean a shortness of breath or light panting (see also Chen Wei 1996a, 154).

112 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 461, suggests the category of foods called ganshi might be “fra-grant” foods. Chris Cullen (personal communication, May, 2000) suggested reading gan as a verb “to like.” This makes the sentence grammatically parallel to strip 223, which can be translated literally “does not ingest food.”

113 I follow the transcription in Chen Wei 1996a, 154, 237.

baoshan divination text 199

proposition prayer to Grand River with one gelded ram;114 to the Two Children of Heaven with one complete ewe each; to Wei Mountain with a ram. (Gu) offered the proposition prayer to Chu founders Lao Tong, Zhu Rong, and Yu Yin with two rams each, presented them as a mor-tuary feast sacrifice outside the city wall. To the High Hill and the Low Hill, each one whole gelded pig. (Gu) willed that zuoyin Tuo could move around115 and willed and beat (the ghost), releasing (Tuo) from Jupiter. Gu Ji divined about it saying, “Auspicious.” 116

114 Chen Wei 1996a, 176, reads the graph written with the semantic as (“cas-trated ram”).

115 The words yifuchu “move and return to (his) place” seem to refer to movement forward and backward. Shao Tuo was probably bedridden by this point.

116 The scribe for this section is the same as for nos. 232-33, above. Both sections have the very florid style most evident in the graph for towards the end of each section. Punctuation in the section is minimal but a downward hook-like comma is found at the first three sets of sacrifices. One set being to Tai Yi, Houtu, Siming, another to Da Shui, Er Tianzi, Wei Shan, and the third to Chu gods. The compound graphs include zhisui, zhiyue and zhiri. Harper 2001, 105-06, has translated this sec-tion with slight differences.

appendix one200

Strips 239-241; VII.7

166861>111661

During the year when the Grand sima Nao Hua led the Chu national army to save Fu, on Xingyi month, Jimao day, Chen Yi used the gongming method to prognosticate for zuo(yin) Tuo: already the abdomen and chest are afflicted, with coughing, and no appetite. Still for a speedy recov-ery, is there nothing to be done? Hexagram Yi goes to Hexagram Wu Wang.117 (Chen) divined about it: the long term prognostication is auspi-cious, but the affliction has changed (for the worse); there is decline118

117 Yin lines 2 and 3 of Yijing hexagram 27 (Yi ) turn into Yang lines in 25 (Wu Wang ). They seem to be written with a hint of sensitivity to the different tri-grams.

118 This word is originally written with (possibly as phonetic) over and un-der a “sickness” element . Hubei, vol. 1, 58, n. 473, takes as the phonetic and reads nie [L*�jat]. Schuessler 1987, 442, suggests that this word means “retribu-tion, punishment”; Karlgren 1972, no. 289g, simply defines its as “calamity.” Li Ling

baoshan divination text 201

and (the infirmity) is slow to heal. (Chen) performed an exorcism to get at its source. (Chen) offered the proposition prayer to the Five Moun-tains with one ewe each. (Chen) sacrificed and prayed to King Zhao with a black water buffalo and presented it as food offerings. (Chen) offered the proposition prayer to Liang, of the Accomplished Lord of Pingye’s line, to Chun of sire Wu’s line, Yin of the Sima line, Jia of the Sire Cai line with a gelded pig each and presented them as food offerings. (Chen) through his will beat (the curse) and released (Tuo) from the ancestors and those who died in battle. Turning to Gu Ji’s exorcism, (Chen) pre-sented mortuary sacrifices and sacrifices outside of the city wall. To the High Hill and the Low Hill, (he used) a whole119 gelded pig each. Chen Yi divined about it and said, “Auspicious.”120

1993, 83, reads qian [L*khjianh] “a punitive affliction given to someone by a god as a chastisement,” but in his 2000 reading, he simply notes that the illness has become more serious (Li Ling 2000, 285). Chen Bingxin and Li Lifang 1998, 76-77, read the phontic as gui as in which as a loan for or (written over a with a ele-ment in the bronze inscriptions) has the meaning “to decline,” according to Shuowen, 76-77: definition for the related phonetic .

119 The graph for quan was written with the element instead of the ele-ment.

120 The only punctuation is for compound graphs zhiyue and zhiri and three small backwards commas to separate three sacrificial events: one to the Five Mountains, one to all the patrilineal ancestors including King Zhao, and one to High Hill and Low Hill. The graphs for tuo (“to exorcise”) are written with the element.

appendix one202

Strips 242-244; VII.8

During the year when the Grand sima Nao Hua led the Chu national army to save Fu, on Xingyi month, Jimao day, Guan Beng used the changling method to prognosticate for zuoyin Tuo: already the abdomen and chest are afflicted, with coughing and no appetite. He hasn’t gotten better in a long time, still for a speedy recovery, is there nothing to be done? (Guan) divined about it: the long term prognostication is auspicious, but the in-firmity is slow to heal. (Guan) performed an exorcism to get at its source. Turning to Gu Ji’s exorcism, (Guan) offered the proposition prayer to the Grand (Unity) with a gelded ram, to Lord Earth and Controller of Fate with a ewe each. (Guan) offered the proposition prayer to the Grand River with one gelded ram; to the Two Children of Heaven each with a ewe; to Wei Mountain with one ram. (Guan) offered the proposition prayer to King Zhao with a black water buffalo, presenting it as food of-ferings. (Guan) offered the proposition prayer to the lian’ao of Dongling

baoshan divination text 203

121 See n. 40, above.122 Hubei reads the complex original graph ( on the left with over ) as a

variant graph for gong “to offer up in sacrifice.” I suspect the word specifies a type of robe, but I use Hubei’s interpretation for the interim.

123 The graph dou [L*dugh] is most likely a graphic variant of shu or (“to place upright, raise up to stand”). The graphic elements and the left hand ele-ment of shu were commonly used interchangeably (see Karlgren 1972, nos. 118f and 127e-h.).

124 The scribe used one compound graph (zhiri) and a repeat (zhongzhong). He punc-tuated after six sacrificial events and at the end of the section: Tai Yi; Houtu and Si Ming; Da Shui; Er Tianzi; Wei Mountain; King Zhao.

Zifa with a fattened piglet,121 wine and food, and offered them outside the city wall with three sets of ritual robes.122 (Guan) offered the propo-sition prayer to Harm with a whole pig’s worth of dried meat, so then [these spirits] will stand (Tuo) up,123 protect and cure him. Guan Beng divined about it and said, “Auspicious.”124

appendix one204

Strips 245-246; VII.9

661118>816111

During the year when the Grand sima Nao Hua led the Chu national army to save Fu, on Xingyi month, Jimao day, Wu Sheng used the chengde method to prognosticate for zuoyin Tuo: already the abdomen and chest are afflicted with a shortness of breath and no appetite; still for a speedy recovery, is there nothing to be done? Hexagram Heng goes to Hexa-gram Xu.125 (Wu) divined about it: the long term prognostication is aus-picious, but the affliction has changed (for the worse) and his infirmity has become more serious.126 (Wu) performed an exorcism to get at its

125 Yin lines 2 and 6 in Yijing, hexagram 32 (Heng ) become Yang lines in 5 (Xu ), and Yang line 3 becomes a Yin line.126 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 484, follows the Shuowen reading of the graph as shen “to

deepen, become more serious.”

baoshan divination text 205

source. (Wu) offered the proposition prayer to the Kings of Jing from Yin Lu127 up to128 King Wu129 with five water buffalo and five piglets. (Wu) willed and beat (the ghost), releasing (Tuo) from the (spirits) On the River and of Drowned People.130 Wu Sheng divined about it and said, “Auspicious.” 131

127 The graph for jing was written with the phonetic xing over a semantic “field” . Hubei, vol. 1, n. 458, reads the first king as Yin Yi , namely, King Xiong ( ) Yi in the Shiji. Chen Wei 1996a, 172, suggests that the king is Yin Li , Xiong Li, the grandfather of Xiong Yi according to the Shiji.

128 Chen Wei 1996a, 231, reads the graph di (Hubei transcribes ) as shi “going to” (see n. 10, above).

129 The Chu King Wu (Xiong Tong ) reigned from 740-690 BCE.130 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 488, reads the original graph with and over as mo

(“to sink in water”), hence these spirits would be the ones of drowned people. 131 The only punctuation is a dash at the end of the section and marks for the

compound graphs for zhisui, zhiyue and zhiri. Harper 1999, 855, has translated these two strips as well. The primary difference is that he translates duo as an “elimina-tion rite.”

appendix one206

Strips 247-248; VII.10

During the year when the Grand sima Nao Hua led the Chu national army to save Fu, on Xingyi month, Jimao day, Xu Ji used the boling method to prognosticate for zuoyin Tuo: already the abdomen and chest are afflicted with a shortness of breath and no appetite. He hasn’t gotten better in a long time, still for a speedy recovery, is there nothing to be done? (Xu) divined about it: the long term prognosis is auspicious, but the infirmity is causing decline. (Xu) presented an exorcism to get at its source. (Xu) offered the proposition prayer to the Grand River with one sacrificial horse. (Xu) offered the proposition prayer to Chun of the Sire Wu line, Yin of the Sima line, Jia of the Sire Cai line with a gelded pig each and presented them as food offerings. (Xu) offered the proposition prayer to

baoshan divination text 207

the Earth Altar with one pig’s worth of dried meat. (Xu) willed and beat (the ghost) releasing (Tuo) from the Sun and the Moon and the Victims. Xu Ji divined about it saying, “Auspicious.” 132

132 The scribe whose style is similar to that of the previous section (nos. 245-46) used the same compound graphs and punctuation after the phrase yi qi gu tuo zhi, af-ter sacrifice events to Da Shui, to the patrilineal ancestors (with punctuation between each name as well), to Earth Altar, and at the end of the section. Most interesting is the manner in which he simplified the word “to pray” dao in its first occurrence on no. 248 but not afterwards.

appendix one208

Strips 249-250; VIII

During the year when the Grand sima Nao Hua saved Fu, on Xingyi month, Jihai day (36), Guan Yi used the baojia method to prognosticate for zuoyin Zhao Tuo: with regard to his having a critical133 infirmity and coughing, might he still not die? Yi divined about it: the long term prog-nosis is that he won’t die, but there is a curse visible among those whose lives were cut off without descendants and (the spirit of) Jianmu Sta-tion.134 (Guan) offered the proposition prayer to those whose lives were

133 The graph, originally written . The phonetic , can be a loan for zhong (“serious”) and the graph could be a loan for tong (“painful”), or zhong (“swell-ing”). Since shen has been used in strip 246 to describe the “deepening” or increased seriousness of the condition, I translate his condition here simply as “critical.”

134 The spirits of those whose lives have been cut off without descendants are the three brothers mentioned in strip 227. Zeng 1993, 45, reads Jianmuwei as Zan-

Event VIII: 316 BCE Early Summer

baoshan divination text 209

muwei , the spirit that occupied a temporary plaque put up to represent it. I suspect that like Jupiter which had to be exorcised in strip no. 238, it is a celestial spirit. One of the stations of Jupiter is called ximu ; see Pankenier 1999, 265. The word jian can mean “sink into serious illness,” so perhaps it is a pun here (Wang Li 2000, 622-23).

135 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 492, reads the graph written with the movement element as wei (“behind”) in the tomb inventory text strip no. 25. I take it here as a verb “to get behind.” The statement then would mean to literally “go behind where he is lo-cated.” For ju as location, see Liu Lexian 1996.

136 This section may have been written in a hurry. The statement at the beginning which indicates the year has been abbreviated. There are no compound graphs. The only punctuation mark is at the very end. The word “curse” and “to exorcise” are distinguished by the addition of a element to “curse.”

cut off without descendants with a fattened piglet each and presented it as food offerings. (Guan) commanded and beat (the ghost), releasing (Tuo) from (the spirit of) Ximu Station, so then (the spirits) would go behind135 him and raise him up. “Still auspicious.” Yi divined about it and said: “Auspicious.” 136

appendix one210

Back of strip 249(A non-divinatory event expressing difficulty in locating the spirit-cause.)

The name of the district is unknown.

APPENDIX TWO

BAOSHAN INVENTORY TEXT

Note: Commas in the Chinese version represent the text’s original punc-tuation. Compound graphs (hewen) are marked in the original with two commas together. I did not include these, but write out the two charac-ters. I have made a number of adjustments in the Hubei transcription to reflect later research.

Images of the original bamboo strips are adapted from Hubeisheng Jingsha tielu kaogudui 1991, plates CX-CXXI. Although the majority of them are relatively clear, many of the photographic backgrounds had become darkened with age, making reproduction here difficult. Thus some of the images have been edited to reveal a bit more of the graphs on the bamboo strips. In some cases where a graph was written with a variant semantic element but the meaning is uncontested, I simply have transcribed using the modern graph. I describe a number of variations in the footnotes. Interested readers are encouraged to consult the Hubei transcription, Chen Wei 1996a, and Li Ling 2000. The Hubei transcription is by Liu Binhui, Peng Hao, Hu Yali, and Liu Zuxin. There are occasional differences between their commentary and the tomb report with regard to readings and matching objects mentioned in the Inventory Text with those found in the tomb.

appendix two212

1. BAMBOO STRIPS 251-277

Strips 251-258 These strips were found in the eastern tomb compartment and seem to relate to items in this chamber.

Strip 251 [broken]

Metal Items in the Dining Room: Two [metal vessels…]

baoshan inventory text 213

Strip 252[broken] [broken] Metal Items in the ...: Two small vases,1 two metal....

Strip 253[broken] [blank to broken end]... caldron, one metal ladle,2 two jars for grain mash3 each engraved, two bowl type jars4 each red on the inside and (black) lacquer on the outside (with) two metal [ladles?]...

Strip 254[broken] [blank space] metal cups, two grain vessels(?),5 four metal serving dishes,6 one metal

1 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 496, reads as pingying and suggests they refer to a pair of small-mouth short-necked vases in the eastern compartment but do not re-fer to an illustration number. Chen Songchang 1995, 393-94, suggests a reading of pingxing, which is also the reading by the excavating archaeologists in Hubei, vol. 1, 105. They identify the vessels with either two plain hu with drooping shoulders, see vol. 1, 105, fig. 64, vol. 2, pl. 30.4, or two straight-neck flat-shouldered hu, see 105, fig. 65, vol. 2, pl. 5.4.

2 The graph stands for , a ladle. Archaeologists found 6 bronze ladles; Hubei, vol. 1, fig. 69.2, vol. 2. pl. 34.3.

3 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 498, understands jiangbai to refer to the colors of the vessel. He Linyi 1998, 705, notes that jiangbai was also written as . If we understand bai as a reference to white colored grain rather than just the color white, then this vessel was perhaps for holding a fermented grain mash (see Hubei, vol. 1, n. 524, where bai is understood as referring to rice). Hubei, vol. 1, n. 498, reads the graph written with the element over a loan for hu , which the Shuowen defines as a horn-shaped wine drinking cup, and the Guangyun defines as a vessel for animal fat (see He Linyi 1998, 338). Li Tianhong 1993, 89, reads the graph as a variation of graph for lu , a vessel for heating. It seems that neither Hubei’s nor Li’s explanation fits the usag-es. Guo Ruoyu 1994, 72, reads it when it appears in a similar phrase in the Xinyang Zhangtaiguan tomb inventory texts strip 2-07 as tan , a jar. The graph occurs in Baoshan strip 253 as a reference to decorated containers and in strip 254 as a modi-fier describing a type of container. Chen Songchang 1995, 395, suggests that word may refer to a style of hu wine vessel; see also n. 7, below. See Hubei, vol. 2, fig. 31, for jar like metal hu and fou vessels of various decor found in Baoshan tomb 2. For descriptions of the fou, see Hubei, vol. 1, 106-08, especially the 4 niu fou described by the archaeologists in Hubei, vol. 1, 108, fig. 66.4, vol. 2., pl. 31.3.

4 This graph stands for yu .5 This vessel is a mystery. Hubei, vol. 1, 369, transcribes the right-hand element

as but it looks more like . 6 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 503, claims that since the original graph had a metal semantic

appendix two214

serving dish style wine vessels,7 two jar style wine vessels one caldron style and one with a metal ladle, two knives, two containers for grain mash both engraved and both with plain yellowish gold colored8 decor and both with bowl-like style.9

Strip 255

Dining Room Food: one basket10 of spiced dried meat, one basket of sliced dried meat,11 one jar of wren12 mincemeat, one jar of honey,13 two jars of scallions,14 one jar of chives,15 one jar of water chestnuts,16 one

element that the serving dishes were four bronze dou type vessels, round bowls on high stands. The Hubei archaeologists note four he vessels found in the tomb; Hubei, vol. 1, 108, fig. 68.2, 3, 4, 5; vol. 2, pl. 32.2, 6. One, item 2:90, was covered.

7 Chen Songchang 1995, 394-95, follows Qiu Xigui’s identification of the word in Han tomb inventory texts as a reference to a flat hu vessel, a vase for alcohol.

Chen suggests that the word in the Baoshan text may have referred to a dou style hu vessel, perhaps a round vase on a stand. If the Hubei archaeologists are correct then the graph referred to the cover ( ), see previous n.

8 The graph is read as . Hubei, vol. 1, n. 505, reads jin as a loan for jin “brocade.” I suspect that when a word such as is written with a semantic element

(as it often appears in the Tomb Inventory text) it refers to the color rather than to the substance of the item.

9 I have taken the last two phrases beginning with to be descriptions of the vessel. This follows the original punctuation.

10 The original graph has the and semantic elements around the phonetic . (If we took zhang as the Chu phonetic, then according to Li Fanggui’s (Schuessler

1987, 814) Shijing rhyme-based reconstruction, the final would be *-�ng with a pala-talized initial *tj-, placing the pronunciation possibly later in time). I take it as variant of . Hubei reads the graph as a loan for described in the Shuowen as a basket for packing cups in. Here, Hubei, vol. 1, n. 506, explains, it is a basket for packing dried meat. I would argue that this word is part of this phrase found at the end of strip 256 (and not part of the next strip; see Hubei). For descriptions of the sixty nine square or rectangular baskets with different patterned designs (now mostly consist-ing of yellow, black, and brown colors; some red was found on baskets found in the northern chamber) found in the tomb, see Hubei, vol. 1, 150-63. The majority were located in the eastern compartment.

11 The word fu was written with the phonetic over the semantic .12 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 508, explains the bird written with the phonetic to be

which according to the Shuowen was also called a jiaoliao . The graph for clay jar is written with a “stone” element .

13 For the transcription of the graph for “honey” (mi), see He Linyi 1993, 60, and Li Tianhong 1993, 89.

14 The graph for cong is written with a phonetic and a “grass” semantic. Hubei, vol. 1, n. 509, notes that the Zhouli, “Tianguan, Suiren,” discusses the use of various types of onion in mincemeats. The general term for the plant type was zu ; in

baoshan inventory text 215

jar of honeyed plums, one container of honeyed meat mincemeat, one container of sliced meat mincemeat, one container of dried fish mince-meat,17

the Baoshan text it and all forms of are typically written in the middle of the semantic. The cong was a scallion type of onion.

15 The graph for jiu was written with a phonetic between the and se-mantics. Liu Xinfang 1992, 74-75, notes that the word represented jiu was written with the phonetic and the semantic in Han bamboo strips from Linyi .

16 Hubei, vol. 1, 511, reads the graphs as , for , a name for an aquatic grass. Liu Xinfang 1992, 74, explains that the first graph refers to a plant that grows in watery areas and the entire term stands for diaohu , the grain of an aquatic plant, also called a ling , a water chestnut kernel.

17 The graph was perhaps a loan for , a sauce made of dried meat. In slip 256 the element is replaced with the element. I suspect that they are variants of one graph representing meat cut up in slices, or diced into a sauce (Hubei, vol. 1, n. 514, n. 518). The right hand side of the graph with the fish element is a little unclear. Hubei did not transcribe this graph. My use of zha is a guess.

appendix two216

Strip 256

[blank space to end]one container of plain dried meat,18 one lidded (container) for dregs,19 one

18 The original graph for su is composed of the and semantic elements around the phonetic .

19 Hubei, vol. 1, 369, did not transcribe these graphs. I read the first graph as a variant of cao (a loan for ?) and the graph following the numeral one as a type of container which I read as a variant of hai, a loan for gai .

baoshan inventory text 217

container of lotus root (?),20 four? [containers?] decorated in green and gold, four woven containers of dried grain, 21 one basket of sliced fish.

Strip 257

Baskets22 for Eating which are in the Dining Room: two baskets of sliced dried piglet meat, two baskets of spiced dried meat, one basket of steamed23 pork, one basket of roasted24 pork, two baskets of honey sweets, two baskets of rice sweets, one basket of fried25 chicken, one basket of roasted chicken, two baskets of fried fish, two baskets of chestnuts,

Strip 258

two baskets of white-stone pear,26 two baskets of fuci root,27 two baskets of bamboo shoots,28 two baskets of mulberries,29 two baskets of water

20 The graph read as ou is the same as jiu except that the “grass” semantic ele-ment (see n. 15, above) was exchanged for a “water” element.

21 I suspect that the original scribes erred in punctuation. They punctuated after qiu (“dried grain”), putting “four baskets food” together, which does not make much sense. However since at least three graphs just previously are obscured, the entire pas-sage remains unclear. I suspect the graph [L*rj�gh] was a loan for [*L*sr�jg], a Baoshan graphic variant for (“basket”) [L*sj�g] (see Zhang Guiguang 1994, 75-76). The original graph for was composed of and semantic elements above and below an element that likely consisted of a phonetic element or a simpli-fied to a over a .

22 This basket name (usually) written with the semantic over the phonetic gong [L*kjung] makes the word similar in pronunciation to the basket name in strip

255 (see n. 10, above) with the phonetic gong [L*kung]. I suspect we are dealing with two methods of writing the same word. This type of variation occurred in the Divination Text as well.

23 The original graph for zheng was written with a simplified ( over ) pho-netic over the “fire” semantic.

24 The original graph for zhi consisted of the phonetic between the semantic elements and .

25 The word ao was original represented by the phonetic usually with the “fire” semantic.26 See Hubei, vol. 1, n. 528.27 A black edible root about the size of a finger that produces purple sprouts; see

Hubei, vol. 1, n. 529. 28 The phonetic in the original graph was a double (under a “grass” element);

see Hubei, vol. 1, n. 530.29 The graph for shen is written with both the and the semantic elements.

appendix two218

chestnuts,30 two baskets of ginger,31 one basket of water chestnut leaves?, two baskets of dried pears,32 one basket of hammered dried meat, one basket of pisi bird,33 one basket of roast chicken, one set of baskets.34

30 Liu Xinfang 1992, 77, reads the original graph ji (with ) as ji another term for (“water chestnuts”), the kind found in both Baoshan tombs 1 and 2 and in the Zeng Hou Yi tomb.

31 The original graph for jiang consisted of the phonetic under a “grass” ele-ment.

32 The graph for was written with simply the phonetic and no semantic el-ement.

33 Possibly a type of large wild duck called also a gusi ; see Hubei, vol. 1, n. 61. The Baoshan scribes wrote the word pisi as (with the latter graph written with an added element).

34 The second graph in the term must be a loan word for a word of similar sound [L*sj�j?] as found above, n. 21, possibly also for si (“basket”). It seems, then, that there were at least two scribes: one dictating and the other transcribing.

baoshan inventory text 219

Strips 259-264 These were found in the northern section of the southern compartment and seem to relate to items found in the western and northern compart-ments. The scribe for these strips wrote in a much tighter hand resulting in more words per strip than the previous strips in this text.

Strip 259

[broken]Items used for Traveling placed in the Com-partment’s Back :35 one xie-skin cap36 with cap strings, one funeral cap37 with green [and gold?], two fox shin covers,38 one purple fur hat, one fan handle for show,39 one pair fish skin shoes, one set inner knee covers, two pair leather shoes both with dangling40 silk trim, one towel41 basket with six towels, one wrap

35 Chen Wei 1996a, 192-93, claims that this refers to the northern or “back” com-partment. He bases this idea on Gao Zhi (unpub. conference paper), who takes the phonetic of the original graph (written with a under ) to be shao and hence a possible loan for shao (“far end, back”).

36 The original graph for “cap,” guan, was written without the semantic. Hubei, vol. 1, n. 539, reads gui [L*kwig] as a loan for xie [L*grig], an animal skin men-

appendix two220

tioned in the Huainanzi used for caps by the Chu people. Liu Xinfang 1992, 75-76, points out that the hat was also called a xian guan , as in Mozi (“Gong Meng”), which describes the Chu King Zhuang as ruling while wearing the cap tied with strings, as well as a red cloak and broad gown (Mozi jiangu 12, sect. 48, in Zhuzi jicheng, vol. 4, 173). The animal was referred to variously as xianbei , xixiao , xiangui , a thin-waisted supple-necked goat or sheep with horns whose fur was used for belts by nomadic peoples such as the Donghu (Xianbi) or Xiongnu. The hat may have been in a horn shape.

37 Liu Xinfang 1992, 77, suggests that Shao Tuo may have required a funeral hat because he had not finished mourning for one or both of his parents. The original graph is written with a element.

38 The graph likely stands for . The next graph is difficult to decipher; it is perhaps a color word, such as written with a element. The Shuowen explains as “shin covers”; see Liu Xinfang 1992, 72.

39 The graph is read as . Hubei, vol. 1, n. 544, reads the original graph (written with the semantic and the phonetic) as , a vessel for traveling and identifies it as item 390 in the western compartment. Liu Xinfang 1992, 71-72, reads it as , a feather fan hung at the waist during formal occasions, and identifies it with item 407 (see Hubei, vol. 2, fig. 90.4) or other fans found in the western compartment.

40 The word xuan written as is also found in the Yangtian Inventory text strip 10. The Yupian defines it as xuanzhuisuo “a dangling cord” (see Guo Ruoyu 1994, 118; and Wang Li 2000, 944). I suspect it is a loan for xuan (“dangling”). Hubei, vol. 1, n. 530, reads it as a loan for zuan , which they understand as a braid of multicolored threads. The same phrase appears in strip 271 and the plaque (line 1) where it seems to refer to a fringe along chariot sideboards.

41 The graph for jin is written with the jin phonetic and the semantic el-ement.

42 The graph was written with a element.43 The word “mat” (xi) was written with a “bamboo” semantic over the pho-

netic .

around turban, four combs in one basket, one painted42 comb with gold embroidered white silk pocket, one white silk mat43 ... [original phrase may be incomplete]

baoshan inventory text 221

Strip 260

[broken]

twisted leather [straps?], one metal [?], one stool,44 one retractable bed with slats, one woven screen with wooden poles?,45 one feather fan, two bamboo fans, one [leather?],46 one bedroom mat, one horn shaped [washing vessel?],47 one bamboo comb with gold thread pocket, one [washing vessel?], one jar,

44 The original graph for ping was written with a phonetic and and se-mantic elements.

45 I suspect that this item may refer to the woven reed screen and poles that were intended to go around the bed, see the description in Hubei, vol. 1, vol. 1, 92.

46 This item is difficult to decipher. The first graph, written is a mystery. Ac-cording to relatively late sources quoted in Morohashi’s Dai kanwa jiten (vol. 7, 565, 568, 570), a similar graph with numerous variants could mean “to get rid of ” or ‘to scratch.’

47 The graph, perhaps , appears twice in this strip and is difficult to decipher.

appendix two222

one Zheng48 bow, one painted quiver?, one vessel for washing the head?, two small metal altar tables,49 four arrows, one [? weapon]…

Strip 261

[broken] One white silk robe with red thread trim50 and trim from Lecheng,51 no lining and with numinous bright embroidery, one juqu bird,52 one dag-ger-axe, two? , one table...

Strip 262 [broken]

...two lamp tomb servants, one white wild animal53 skin with gold trim, one white silk sheet with a green lining and gold trim, two baskets, ...gold trim, one sable54 and green cape with purple lining, embroidered trim, gold trim, and white and gold embroidery.

48 The word dian is the phonetic in the word zheng (Hubei, vol. 1, n. 560). 49 See strip 266.50 The word du (“to see,” originally written with the semantic element) must

be a loan here, possibly either for zhe (“red”) or perhaps zhu . The graph fu (“skin”) might be a loan for lu (“trim”) or (“skin”). The Hubei transcription is mistaken; see He Linyi 1998, 517.

51 Lecheng was a place name in use for several districts established during the Han period in Hebei and Henan. The name was likely in use before the Han period as well.

52 The first graph was written with a semantic element and a phonetic. The second graph stands for the graph . The juqu bird is a quail-like bird with long legs, long tail feathers, a sharp beak, greenish-gray back, white underside. and a black ring under its neck. It was said to cry while it flies and sway while it walks. As there were no birds discovered in the western compartment, Hubei, nos. 103 and 104, suggests that maybe one of the two bronze birds found in the eastern compartment was a juqu bird (Hubei, vol. 1, n. 562).

53 The original graph for the word “wild animal” (shou) was written with a se-mantic element.

54 The original graph for the word “sable” (diao) was written with a semantic and a phonetic element.

baoshan inventory text 223

Strip 263

[broken]....lining with trim from Guwu,55 one white lin-ing of Qin silk with bright gold trim, two mir-ror basins,56 two stands,57 one lidded box,58 two bone strips,59 one sheet of softened fine white silk,60 one metal knife,61 one bedroom mat, two mats for praying,62 one mat for squatting, two reed mats all with embroidery; one cap of finely

55 The word gu might refer to a type of grass or natural thread, but the term guwu is unknown. I suspect it was a place name.

56 Not included in the tomb (Hubei, vol. 1, n. 565).57 The graph was a loan for du , found in the Liji, “Liqi,” referring to a stand

(Hubei, vol. 1, n. 566).58 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 567; see vol. 2, fig. 32.3 and 4, following the Shuowen, reads hui

as a type of he and notes the bronze he packed with four smaller he found in the eastern compartment.

59 For the reading of “strips,” see Hubei, vol. 1, n. 568.60 The word written is explained in the Guangya, “Shi qi,” as lian , silk which

is softened through boiling (Morohashi, vol. 8, 1021).

appendix two224

woven raw silk,63 one cap of finely woven hemp,64 all with flaps.65

Strip 264 [broken] ...one chestnut66 with basket, one hat basket, two leather roundels.

61 Hubei reads chao and xiao . 62 In the Mawangdui Tomb Inventory, this type of mat is called a pixi . Hubei,

vol. 1, n. 572, explains that this is a loan for miexi , a woven bamboo mat. Liu Xinfang 1992, 72, explains that there were three types of mats: for sleeping, praying, and squatting. This one was for praying. The original graph for “mat” is .

63 Hubei, vol. 1 n. 575, reads fu as hu , thin and finely woven (fiber). For a sample hat, see Sun Ji 1991, 235, fig. 584.

64 The graph is read as .65 Hubei, vol. 1 n. 577, suspects wei might be wei , either a hanging pocket for

fragrance or a hanging cloth such as an apron or curtain (see Wang Li 2000, 266). Il-lustrations of Han-period hats suggest that a small curtain or flap may be indicated; see Sun Ji 1991, 234, fig. 58.3.

66 I suspect li is incorrect or a loan here for some sort of hat decoration. The original is not clear.

baoshan inventory text 225

Strips 265-266 These strips were found in the eastern section of the southern cham-ber and seem to relate to items found in the eastern compartment. The scribe in charge of transcribing this section wrote in large open graphs and used little punctuation.

Strip 265

Metal Vessels for the Great Sacred Plot:67 one round basined caldron for beef and one round basined caldron for pork,68 two tall legged caldrons,69 two caldrons for fill-ing with cooked food offerings,70 two cal-drons for food offerings,71 two caldrons for steaming, two mirror basins,72 two round matching jars with lids,73 two drinking jars,74 one soup caldron,75 one caldron with loop ears,76 two metal cylinders,77 two grain ves-

67 For a discussion of this term, see chap. 2; Hubei, vol. 1, n. 579; and Chen Wei 1996a, 192-97.

68 See Hubei, vol. 1, 98. For the “beef caldron,” see vol. 1, fig. 56.2; and vol. 2, pl. 27.3. For the “pork caldron,” see vol. 1, fig. 56.1. Inside the “singed beef caldron” were water buffalo bones including 1 right scapula, 4 right ribs, and 2 vertebrae.

69 For the 2 shengding in the tomb, see Hubei, vol. 1, 97-98, fig. 57.1; vol. 2, pl.

appendix two226

sels for mortuary feasts,78 one bowl-style caldron for liquids,79 two small ladles,80 two full cups,81 one basin,82

5.1, and fig. 27.1. Inside one was the singed upper half of a water buffalo, the front-right leg bone.

70 The graph is read as kui .71 Hubei, vol. 1, 98-102; vol. 2, figs. 28-29, notes that there are 14 lidded round

caldrons in the tomb that divide into roughly 6 styles. Some show evidence of use and one had six water buffalo vertebrae (item no. 2:109).

72 The graph is read as . Hubei identifies these as items 2:119 and 2:96; see vol. 1, 108, and the first jian pictured in fig. 67, and in vol. 2, pl. 32.1.

73 Liu Xinfang suspects that the luanfou referred to a pair of dui vessels (items no. 2:175, 2:168). Hubei thought luan (“egg”) was a loan for guan (“libation”) and the vessels referred to were two small-mouth round-bellied jars found in the northern compartment (items no. 2:898, 2:391).

74 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 588, reads xun as zhuo . In the main text of Hubei (vol. 1, 106, fig. 66.1, 66.2; vol. 2, pls. 31.1, 31.2), archaeologists equate item no. 2:289 with the luan fou and item no. 2:426 with the xun fou. Inside item no. 2:426 was a bronze ladle.

75 Hubei claims the soup caldron corresponds to item no. 2:390 pictured in vol. 1, fig. 56.3; and vol. 2, pl. 29.3.

76 Possibly Hubei, vol. 2, fig. 28.1 (item no. 2:106).77 The graph (“metal container”) was written with the phonetic and the se-

mantic .78 For two fu vessels, see Hubei, vol. 1, 102, fig. 61.79 While the two graphs that describe this caldron are legible, their meaning is

uncertain. The first graph appears to have the phonetic yi [L*rak] (two of these phonetics were written over a with a condensed to the left), which could pos-sibly be a loan for ye [L*ragh] (“liquid”). The second graph might have the same phonetic or perhaps yuan [L*ngjan] with semantic elements ji (“sacrifice”) and jin (“metal”). One possible transcription might be wan (“to scoop or pick out”), which has a graphic variant with a metal element (see Morohashi, vol. 11, 625). A more likely candidate would be wan (“bowl”).

80 The graph for ladle or spoon (shao) was written with a element. Archaeolo-gists found 1 spoon; see Hubei, vol. 1, 110, fig. 69.1; vol. 2, pl. 34.2.

81 The graph is read as zhan . Hubei claims these are the two, round spherical lidded vessels called dui; see Hubei, vol. 1, 105, fig. 63; vol. 2, pl. 30.3.

82 Archaeologists discovered 4 bronze basins; Hubei, vol. 1, 108-09, figs. 67.2-4; vol. 2, pls. 33.1-5.

baoshan inventory text 227

Strip 266

[blank to end]one pouring vessel,83 one three legged steamer.84 Wooden Vessels: one broad table,85 one narrow86 table, one table for grains,87 one table for stew,88 one large altar table,89 one small altar table, two washing vessels,90 one altar table handle,

83 The graph is read as yi . Archaeologists discovered 1 bronze yi vessel; Hu-bei, vol. 1, 110, fig. 67.5; vol. 2, pl. 34.1.

84 The steamer is identified in Hubei, vol. 1, 102-03, fig. 60; vol. 2, pl. 30.1. The stand is three legged. The word qiu , also written , is found in the Shijing, ode “Xiao rong” (Mao no. 128), to describe the triangular nature of a spear blade.

85 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 596, reads the graph as duo , short pieces of wood, as a wooden table. Liu Xinfang 1992, 60, follows He Linyi 1998, 893-94, who reads the graph as xi (later written as with the phonetic with a element), an altar table. For illustra-tions of tables found in the tomb, see Hubei, vol. 1, 126-33; vol 2, fig. 38-39.

86 For the reading of as , see Hubei, vol. 1, n. 597.87 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 598, suggests that the table was perhaps made out of grain

stalks.88 The graph zai was originally written with a element. For the reading as “stew”

(written with a element), see Hubei, vol. 1, n. 599.89 An altar table for half an animal carcass, see Hubei, vol. 1, n. 600.90 In Hubei, vol. 1, 102, archaeologists read the original graph, mu , as graphic

loan for and a loan for yu (“caldron hooks”); see fig. 59 and n. 602. This seems

appendix two228

two implements picking up food,91 two piercing implements,92 five yellow basins, four high footed serving cups for mortuary feasts, four yellow high footed serving cups, one food tray with metal feet.93

an unnecessary scholarly circumlocution to match the tomb artifacts with the Inven-tory. Liu Xinfang 1992, 73, shows that washing vessels inscribed with the words guan and yu have been found in other Chu tomb sites. He notes that guan were for washing hands, yu for washing the body, and mu for washing the head.

91 The original graph looks much like the fourth graph on strip 261 only with the on the left and the on the right. Here it must be a loan, possibly for zhu or zhuo or , a utensil for chopping or eating food (the word eventually referred to chop-

sticks, but there is no evidence of chopsticks in tombs of this time period).92 It is clear qi “to pray” [L*gj�d] must be a loan. In the Zhouli, “Xia guan, Xiaozi,”

it was used for the word gui [*khj�t], meaning to pierce a sacrificial animal for a blood sacrifice (Zhouli zhengyi, sect. 16, j. 57, 73).

93 See Hubei, vol. 1, n. 604.

baoshan inventory text 229

Strips 267-277 94 These strips were found in the southwestern section of the southern compartment and seem to relate to items found in the western com-partment. The calligraphy and lack of punctuation are similar in style to those on strips 265 and 266.

Strip 267

The year that Grand sima Nao Hua saved Fu, Xiang month, Ding-hai day, one high-sided chariot95 was used for

94 Li Jiahao 1993 suggests that the text flows better if we consider strip 272 as following strips 267 and 268, and strip 271 as connected to strips 276, 269, and 270. Chen Wei 1996a, 187-88, feels that strips 269 and 270 belong in the war chariot sec-tion (with strip 271) and strip 272 belongs with the high-sided chariot section. I have retained the Hubei order for easy reference to the published text.

95 For the reading of xuan , see He Linyi 1993, 63. For a discussion of it as a

appendix two230

the zuoyin’s burial, the side boards96 in green97 silk with trim from Gu Feng, the axle98 wrap from Gu Feng, the boarding ropes from Gu Feng, thin white silk cloth with bindings,99 purple

Strip 268

coffin ropes,100 tied together ropes,101 purple leather cover for the chariot box-front and leather horse breast strap with appliqué,102 gathered and tied crisscross chariot pulls,103 sable bindings tied to an armor bag of multicolored silk threads,104 sable covered bow case105 with numinously radiant ties, pheasant feather chariot apron,106 one spun cloth umbrella

screened-in chariot used by nobles, see Chen Wei 1996a, 183, 188.96 Hubei reads graph as cheng , a type of long unlined robe, suggesting that it

was material for wrapping the chariot front. In Han times the umbrella pole was called a cheng (written with a element) or gong (see Sun Ji 1991, fig. 29). Since it is in green silk, I suspect it was a loan for ting , meaning “chariot sideboards.”

97 The graph as in earlier strips stands for . In this case, it was written with a element.

98 Zhang Guiguang 1994, 78, 74, transcribes this graph as , and explains that it is a word for axle.

99 The word represented by the graph (juan [“ties”); see Wang Li 2000, 919) is used in the plaque text (line 3) in the same phrases, but the graph has an added ele-ment. I suspect it represented the word for “rope” sheng . Wang Li 2000, 976, points out that the phonetics zhuan and zhuan were interchangeable, and that the word represented by the graph was also written juan , a thin white silk (ibid., 941).

100 The original graph is the same as found as part of a personal name in strip 225; Li Ling 2000, 290, reads it fa [L*pjat] (see app. 1, n. 94, above). The graph (bo [L*pat]) is a loan for fu (“ropes for pulling the coffin”) (Liji, “Tangong, xia”; see Wang Li 2000, 394).

101 For xun see Wang Li 2000, 910; for xun yue, Hubei, vol. 1, n. 614, suggests these were ropes made of multi-colored silk ties.

102 The original graph for feng is written with the phonetic and the seman-tic element (see Hubei, vol. 1, n. 617).

103 The original graph for lu is written with the phonetic and the semantic element. The term luoqing is found in the Tianxingguan inventory text strip 4607. Meanings of word luo include “ropes, net” (Morohashi, vol. 8, 1050). He Linyi 1998, 489, reads qing as a loan for jing (“weave, the warp of a fabric, lengthwise”). The graph is also an alternative writing for or (“the cross beam used for pulling a chariot”) (see Morohashi, vol. 6, 309; vol. 10, 1014).

104 I read this six-word phrase as describing one decorative feature. The original graph for the second word is written with with and elements. Hubei transcribe it as , a rare word for “knot” (see Morohashi, vol. 8, 1113), but wei is the correct

baoshan inventory text 231

cover107 with red and yellow patterns, axle ends108 in green silk with satin and gossamer strings.

transcription (see Karlgren 1972, no. 496k; see also He Linyi 1998, 1230, 1236). In strip no. 266 we see how the graph was read xi (see n. 85, above). He Linyi 1998, 894, reads the graph here as xi also but takes it as a loan for , a piece of silk used to bind the hair (see also Wang Li 2000, 943). Since a sable knot does not make much sense, I suspect that in fact it is a tassel made from the animal tail. Hubei does not transcribe the fourth. It is written as with a element underneath. I read it as wei (“to tie”). The fifth character (written with the phonetic and the semantic el-ement ) is explained as a decoration of five-colored threads (see He Linyi 1998, 1188, 1230), which suggests that the sable tails were part of a decorative fringe. Hu-bei, vol. 1, n. 618, explains only the last two characters as fen liu “multicolored threads and patterned hemp threads” (see also He Linyi 1998, 164, who explains liu

as qu read as jiu , with the phonetic [L*kjg�wx]). The same word appears in the following strips written with the phonetic and the semantic element , and in strip 273 it is written with the element (a common alternative for the “leather” semantic ). The same phonetic appears in the word gao [L*k�gw], a bag for stor-ing armor, bows and arrows (Wang Li 2000, 529), a meaning that seems to fit each usage better than liu (“patterned hemp strings”).

105 For zhang, Hubei, vol. 1, n. 619, reads chang (“cloth covering the gong ”), found in Shijing, ode “Xiao rong” (Mao no. 128). The word gong can either refer to the ribs of a chariot umbrella or to a bow. In this case, it would seem to refer to a bow case, compare with slip 272, below.

106 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 620, reads di as (“pheasant feathers,” originally written with semantic elements and ) and (originally written with the element) [phonetic L*skhljam?] as a loan for chan , a chariot or an apron for the front of a funeral cart (see Wang Li 2000, 1221). Since di is written with the element, He Linyi 1998, 314, claims that it is a surname. A funeral cart apron with a pheasant design seems most likely. In strip 276, was written with the semantic.

107 The graph following fang is difficult to decipher. Hubei transcribes it as a phonetic between the elements and , but this is not terribly convincing, par-ticularly as they are not able to explain its meaning. The Xinyang tomb inventory text strip 2-04 has the combination fanghe with he written in a somewhat similar fashion. This graph is transcribed by He Linyi 1998, 900, as a phonetic under a element and read as he , a loan for (“cover”). In the Xinyang case the term seems to re-fer to a chariot umbrella cover of spun material. Guo Ruoyu’s 1994, 69, transcription of the Xinyang graph as the phonetic under a element and reading of it as , which he explains a kind of rope used on the chariot, is less convincing. The Baoshan graph is somewhat unclear but is closer to sloppily written versions of he than to any rendition of huo (compare Baoshan 83, 138, 143). For Baoshan versions of , see strips 95, 122, 152, and possibly 260, above.

108 Wang Li 2000, 1393, 1621, defines ling as wood on a lattice frame. During the Han period, a feiling consisted of ties wrapped around the very end of the axle after the linchpins; see Sun Ji 1991, 114, fig. 29.

appendix two232

Strip 269

The (chariot) carries on it a red flag109 with 140 strips110 and kingfisher feathers111 on top, an animal tail flag112 center pole with ten red and white silk, seven three-sided lances,113 a chariot double-bladed dagger-axe with black and white feathers,114 one three-sided lance with its cover and cord,115 five three sided lances with barbs,116 three three-

109 The graph for flag was originally written with the semantic element over the phonetic . It is read as jing .

110 He Linyi 1998, 206-07, reads you as tiao .111 The graph read as zu was written with the elements (understood here as

a simplification of the phonetic ) and under a element. 112 The original graph for has a double element on top (likely a mistake for

) instead of the more typical to the side.113 Hubei transcribes the phrase “seven three-sided lances” as “ten ge.” The same line

in the plaque (line 2) has the correct form. “Ten” was probably a mistake for “seven” and ge a graphic variant of qiu. Both ge and qiu are written in the original with the element (for the similarity of and graphs, see He Linyi 1998, 1098, 1375).

114 Hubei reads the original graph (written or with a element) as , a loan for xian (“black and white warp and woof ”; from a commentary to the Liji on the term qinguan , Hubei, vol. 1 n. 626; see also He Linyi 1998, 1416-7; Wang Li 2000, 925). Compare strip 273.

115 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 628, reads as the original graph (written under a ele-ment) as , referring to “wrapping,” and the graph as “skin of a variety of hemp stalk.” This reading seems unlikely given the phrase in strip 273. He Linyi 1998, 1471, reads the first graph as fu (“covering”) and the second graph as (“rope”) (ibid., 1998, 1243).

baoshan inventory text 233

sided lances, one umbrella pole117 with feathers on top, one (set of) ar-mor118 of blended short haired animal (skins)119 with helmet,120

Strip 270

[blank to end],121

rope of green strings, on the driver’s right two (sets of) red (dyed) el-ephant hide122 armor each with a helmet,123 purple ropes, one decorated drum,124 one light red gathered bag,125 one decorated drumstick,126 one nao-bell127 with a tassel tied on,128 two rope reins129 and a numinously ra-diant head ornament.130

116 Compare Hubei, vol. 1, n. 629, and He Linyi 1998, 1343. He Linyi’s transcrip-tion is clearly correct. He points out that cuan was later written as zuan .

117 Hubei does not explain the graph that I translate as “umbrella pole.” A similar graph is found in the Xinyang tomb inventory text strip no. 220 where Guo Ruoyu 1994, 90, reads it as ting (“stool”). An alternative reading is ying, the name for the lower joint of umbrella pole (see Wang Li 2000, 488). See also n. 96, under strip 267, above.

118 Hubei and He Linyi read the graph as jia (“armor”; [L*krap]). Hubei, vol. 1, n. 635, explains it as a kind of armor. It is found in the Yangtian Inventory text slip 39 to describe a type of yi (“outerwear, cloak”). Versions of the graph are found in the Baoshan administrative text strip 81 where it is used with bing (“weapons”) and in the Zhongshan bronze inscriptions where it is found in combination with zhou (“helmet”), where it has been explained by Zhu Dexi and Qiu Xigui 1974 as jia (see Hubei, vol. 1, n. 128; He Linyi 1998, 1380-1381). It is an old graph that can be found in early Western Zhou bronze inscriptions where it is explained as an archaic variant for gao , tiger-skin armor (Ma Chengyuan 1988, vol. 3, 42-43).

119 The same phrase is found in the bamboo plaque text of the Baoshan in-ventory text. In this strip, the first character is read as luo [L*gluarx] (“short-haired animal”). In the plaque version, the word is replaced with long [L*ljung] (“dragon”), also a loan for “black and white, variegated” (Karlgren 1972, no. 1193). A version of luo may be the graph written with red lacquer paint onto the left side of horse armor found in the tomb, see Hubei vol. 1, 222.

120 The combined graph zhi shou when in front of zhou “helmet” must be read as a modifier “of the head,” rather than suggesting that it was a helmet with animal-skin armor on top. See the phrase at the beginning of strip 270 where it follows jie “all” (Hubei, vol. 1, n. 636).

121 The strip here has a nick carved out in the same shape as a comma, see nick-like brush marks in 265, 266, and perhaps 269. Nicks indicate where there were once strings holding the bamboo strips together into a book that unrolled.

122 The phrase dingxiang (the first graph is a phonetic loan and the second a complex form for “elephant skin” written with two elements with a ), like he-luo, above in strip 269, must describe the armor. Hubei, vol. 1, n. 635, claims xiang is for (“elephant”). He Linyi takes the first character as a loan for ding “top of the head” (1998, 794), however I believe that the descriptive word cheng (“red”), a color used to describe fish tails and clothing, is more likely (see Morohashi, vol. 10, entries 37008 and 37016, 825, 827-28). The words ding and he (strip 269) were also words for bells, but this interpretation does not seem to fit here.

appendix two234

123 For leather armor found in the tomb, see Hubei, vol. 1, 216-19.124 The original graph that I read as “drum” was written as . In the equivalent

line in the plaque text (line 3), the graph is written with the phonetic. He Linyi 1993, 63 reads the first version of the graph as having the phonetic and as a loan for tuan , another name for a chariot used to carry the coffin. If we read the se-mantic element as a variant of , we might read this graph as the word zhi , a low-slung chariot or the ends of the yoke shafts (He Linyi 1998, 1089). The problem with either reading is the lack of the measure word for chariots, cheng , as well as the context. This is clearly an item associated with an armor bag and decorated chas-sis-board ropes on the vanguard chariot, the zhengche, and not a separate chariot at all. Following some of Guo Ruoyu’s readings for Xinyang strip 2-03, where we find a somewhat similar line with the graph for gu (“drum”) written almost exactly like the Baoshan graph except for a slight difference in the bottom of the phonetic element. I would read the Xinyang phrase as ( ) ( ) (“one decorated drum, two drum sticks, four bags, one gathered numinous [cloth] case”); for readings of individual graphs, see He Linyi 1998, 247; Guo Ruoyu 1994, 66-68, 89; and nn. 125, 126, below.

125 This phrase appears also in the plaque text (line 3) but the second word is writ-ten as qiu [L *tshj�gw] and seems to mean “gathered or wrinkled (pattern), crepe” (He Linyi 1998, 228-29). The first graph [L*tshjugx] can mean light red, purplish red, or green and red (see He Linyi 1998, 387; Guo Ruoyu 1994, 79-80; and Xinyang strips 2.6, 2.7, 2.12, 2.15, 2.19, 2.24, 2.29).

126 The original graph has the phonetic and the semantic element . In the plaque text (line 3) fou [L*pj�gw] is written with the phonetic fu and the semantic element

[L*bj�gwh, bj�kw]. He Linyi 1998, 255, 247, following the Shuowen, understands the first variant as “knife case,” and the second fu as , which Wang Li 2000, 1406, explains as ropes tied on to the axle and the wooden piece between the chassis and the axle. However, if we understand that a drum is involved, as in the Xinyang line read in n. 124, above, this graph should be read as fu (“drumstick”).

127 One nao-bell was found in the southern compartment, see Hubei, vol. 1, 112-16.128 He Linyi 1998, 973, suspects the graph written with the semantic ele-

ment was a variant of ying as it is often found in combination with zu (“ties”). The word sui is written in the Xinyang text and as in the Yangtian strips. Guo Ruoyu 1994, 81, 90, 119, reads the former as “ribbon, cord,” the latter as “ties” and the combination as “tassels.”

129 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 639, reads the two graphs ( the first originally written with the phonetic between the elements and and the second with the phonetic with the element) as chaopi . The graph chao is seen in the Chuci as a loan for [L*drjagw], but Hubei suggests here it might be a loan for he “badger” [L*tj�gw]. He Linyi 1998, 732, prefers to read this word simply as min , a frog-like reptile. In strip 273, min is written with a underneath. However, from the plaque text (line 3) where the same expression appears but with semantic elements, I suspect that was for sheng (“rope”), which seems to be written in a variety of ways in this text. Hubei reads the second graph is read as pi (“skin”) in strip 172 but as bei, a word for horse reins (see Wang Li 2000, 1628) in strip 270. See also the plaque text, line 3. “Reins” seems most sensible in context.

130 The word pu [L*buk, *puk] is read as pa [L*prak] by Hubei, vol. 1 (n. 640) and as pu by He Linyi (1998, 1467). Wang Li 2000, 268, explains the latter as a head wrap with four strings, two dangling behind and two used to tie the wrap to the head. See strips 272, 276, 277, plaque (line 3).

baoshan inventory text 235

Strip 271

One leading war chariot:131 water buffalo-skin yokes132 with green silk trim, side boards with ties of multicolored silk threads gathered (together) as a hang-ing fringe, purple coffin ropes, tied to-gether ropes, purple leather cover for the chariot box-front and leather horse breast-strap, wild dog and panda-skin horse cruppers,133 purple armor bag bound together with purple cords, ti-ger-skin covered bow case, four horse armor masks,134

131 In the Zeng Hou Yi Tomb inventory texts, the chariot was called a zhengche (see Chen Wei 1996a, 183-84).132 For “yokes,” see He Linyi 1998, 1322; Wang Li 2000, 1627.133 This phrase also appears in the plaque (line 1) clearly referring to the same objects

but the scribes used different graphs. I read the first two words as “wild dog and panda skin” (For the first word, an, see He Linyi 1998, 993; for the second, mo, see He Linyi 1998, 721, and Wang Li 2000, 1319. He Linyi errs in reading the second word in the plaque phrase; it is clearly a loan). The first graphs in both this and the plaque ver-sion have the phonetic but the semantics are different, here and in the plaque. The second graph differs in both elements. Here the phonetic is but in the plaque it is , which are probably homophones [mo L*mak; bo L*prak]. The semantic elements used for the second word are here and in the plaque. The graphs in the second two-graph combination after the zhi that I read as “horse cruppers” are also written with different graphs in the two versions. In both versions they use the semantic

but the phonetic elements vary. For the first word, the phonetic is difficult to discern. Hubei, vol. 1, n. 645, reads here and , with above for the plaque. He Linyi 1998, 1070, has here and with above for phonetics here and in the plaque, and claims

appendix two236

Strip 272

red metal linchpins,135 white metal shaft-ends,136 axle endpins bound with ties, a three-sided137 lance with barbs, white metal tin mask,138 a three-sided lance with a tail (?),139

that the word here stood for a soft leather tie. I think that both are variants of qiu [L*tshj�gw] (see He Linyi 1998, 228, for similar graphic variants; compare variants for cuan, He Linyi 1998, 1342-3) and that the word should be , a leather strap that goes around the horse’s rump (see Wang Li 2000, 1632). The second word in this set is writ-ten with the phonetic here and the phonetic in the plaque. Here it is understood as jian , dried leather or an item used around the rear of a horse (see Wang Li 2000, 1626; and He Linyi 1998, 995, 966, 1472).

134 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 647, reads kan as ye , a thin plate of pounded metal. He Linyi 1998, 1455, reads kan as [L*kh�mx] (“pit”), and suggests that it was a loan for wan , a horse’s head ornament (see Wang Li 2000, 1531). The phrase is similar to ones found in strip 276: and in the plaque (line 3): . I suspect the graphs for kan and hao are both abbreviations or, in the case of kan, partial graphs of the graph for zhou , which appears in a number of variants; see examples strips 269, 276 and elsewhere in the plaque. The term zhoumian most likely refers to the same item as shouzhou . For an illustration of horse armor, see Hubei, vol. 1, 223. There is a leather wrap around the mask but no ornament in this illustration.

135 See Wang Li 2000, 1512. Since here is written without the element, I read it as “metal.”

baoshan inventory text 237

purple arrow tips (?),140 numinously radiant knotted head decor,141 a green and gold chariot flag.142

136 He Linyi 1998, 1089, explains that should be read as zhi , the ends of the yoke-shafts. Wang Li 2000, 1396, defines zhi as a chariot with a low sloping front, used in contrast to a xuan , a chariot with a high front. He Linyi’s reading is more appro-priate to the context.

137 The word jiu is a phonetic loan here for qiu ; compare strip 269 and 277.138 The xi was also the name of a strip placed in front of the horses face; see

Sun Ji 1991, 114, ill 29.139 Compare with strip 269. The original graph here has a semantic element. I

suspect it was a loan for or perhaps . In strip 277 it is written with the pho-netic.

140 The word bai can mean ba , a term for the end of an arrow (Wang Li 2000, 356). See also strip 276.

141 Hubei transcribes the original graph as over the element . He Linyi 1998, 196, explains the item as a kind of towel. Guo Ruoyu 1994, 70-71, transcribes a similar Xinyang example as and explains that it is a kind of cloth for covering sacrificial vessels. I suspect that in fact the element was not but , which acted as a phonetic [L*pj�g] (see examples of bu in He Linyi 1998, 116) and that it referred to the same word as in strip 270 above (see also strips 276, 277, and the plaque, line 3). I sus-pect it was a head decoration for a horse somewhat similar to that pictured in Sun Ji 1991, 114, fig. 29. The hair on the top of the horse’s head was bound and stood up in a sort of pigtail. There may or may not have been a cloth involved.

142 The original graph, written with the phonetic and the element, is clear-ly a loan (in strip no. 276 only the phonetic is used). If the reading “green metal” is correct (versus “green and gold”), then it is likely a loan for zhong (“chariot shaft back”). However, the semantic element may suggest that the word represented a cloth item in which case the word chuang , a chariot flag made of feathers, or a curtain, may be indicated (see Wang Li 2000, 268). See also strip 277.

appendix two238

Strip 273

[blank to end]One guard chariot:143 water buffalo-skin yokes with white silk trim, coffin ropes, leather cover for the chariot box-front and leather horse breast strap, a multicolored leather armor bag,144 tiger-skin bow bag, a pheasant-feather chariot apron, white metal linchpins. To carry on it, a black145-feather flag with white feathers on top,146 two double-bladed dagger-axes with black and white (feathers), two three-sided lances and two covers all with cords, nine three-sided lances, two lances with barbs both with black and white (feathers), two three-sided lances,

143 The two graphs for “guard chariot” were both originally written with ele-ments. For the chariot, see Chen Wei 1996a, 184.

144 The graph was originally written with a element. The phonetic was written with a element here and a element in strip 270. I read these as represen-tative of the word rather than the simpler, more common, ; it was written with a element on top, representing a “three-sided lance” (see n. 104, above).

145 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 651, reads the complex (and unclear) graph, originally written with a and over over , as a loan for shu (“black”); also written .

146 The original graph is with a element, which Hubei, vol. 1, n. 652, claims refers to “white feathers.”

baoshan inventory text 239

Strip 274 [blank

to end]One chariot with spoke-less wheels:147 cowry (?)

Strip 275

[blank to end] One good-luck chariot:148 green [?],149 two patterned gauze?150 silks, green silk roll with painted multi-color threads,

147 The original graph for gu was written with and and elements. This was the chariot used to carry the coffin, see Chen Wei 1996a, 184-85, 187.

148 The graph stood for . Kong Yingda explains in his commentary on xiangche in the Liji, “Quli, shang,” that it is an ordinary chariot used in daily life placed in the tomb as a “cloud-soul chariot (hunche)” (Liji zhengyi 3, 215, in Shisan jing zhushu, vol. 1, 1253). Chen Wei 1996a, 186-87, suggests that it was Shao’s personal chariot used during his lifetime. He suggests that the other chariots were used for carrying the burial goods.

149 The graph here and in strip 272 might represent the word qian, a kind of red, but I suspect not, because is used in similar combinations.

150 Except for the element , the graph is unclear. Hubei, vol. 1, 370, transcribes the phonetic as chui , which was easily confused with ling (see Guo Ruoyu 1994, 115). See strip 267 for a similar graph with .

appendix two240

Strip 276 151

[blank to end] three-sided lance with tail decor, purple arrow-ends, numinously radiant chariot shaft-back, numinously radiant knotted head decor, metal face ornaments152 for two horses, head armor for four horses, pheasant-feather chariot apron, white metal linchpins, red metal shaft-ends with dangling ties on the ends, hand drums?,153 tied boarding ropes, one (set of) multicol-ored silk threads,

151 Chen Wei 1996a, 188, argues that strip 276 belongs with the war or guard char-iot records.

152 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 657, transcribes the phonetic as . I suspect it is and the word is xi ; compare strip 272.

153 The compound word xupi is written on plaque 1 (line 2) and was pro-nounced similarly to *sjag (or [L*tshrj�gx]) *pjig. I have found two possibili-ties: 1) xupi , also written xipi and shibi , was a belt-hook popular among Xianbi and Donghu peoples during the Warring States period (Morohashi, vol. 9, 300); 2) two small hand-drums, the tao [L*dagw] and pi , were used during sum-mer prayer sacrifices to the mountains and rivers (see Liji Zhengzhu, “Yueling,” 5.12a). Since this section lists items carried in or on a chariot or horse, I tentatively translate “drums” for xubi here. For a possible example of the tao drum with a handle found in Baoshan Tomb 1, see Hubei, vol. 2, pl. IX.3.

baoshan inventory text 241

Strip 277

Ke Fu received one slivered bamboo154 sa-ble-skin cap,155 twenty bronze arrow heads,156 one three-sided lance with tail decor,157 hang-ing flag decor158 of bound ties, two green silk chariot flags, numinously radiant knotted head-decor with one bundle,159 one (set of) strings of bound ties, two kingfisher-feather

154 Hubei, vol. 1, n. 659, suggests that the original graph written with a el-ement be read ce (“to lance”). He Linyi 1998, 587, reads zuo , a quiver made of split bamboo. I take zuo to modify “cap.”

155 The graph for “skin” was originally written with elements and (a common alternative for ). Hubei, vol. 1, 371, transcribes mao for “cap” and He Linyi 1993, 63, transcribes dun (“shield”). Although the upper-left strokes of the graph do not seem to be drawn out as with other examples of mao (strips 131, 138, 269), Hubei’s transcription seems more likely.

156 The original graph has a semantic element. For the reading of “arrow head,” see He Linyi 1998, 1151.

157 The graphs with the element and either the [L*magw] or [L*mugh] phonetic likely represented the same word, possibly . See strip 272.

158 For the reading of as liu , see He Linyi 1998, 215.159 Hubei, vol. 1, 371, transcribes , which He Linyi 1998, 525, suggests is for

cha, written with a element, as found in the plaque (line 3), where it stood for

appendix two242

covered lances,160 one covered jar?, one hook?,161 one coffin pall?,162 tail decorations for two horses, 163 two mirrors.164

“metal shaft ends” zhi . The word cha referred later (from Tang times onward) to a decorative metal item hung at the belt that reflected one’s rank in society (Wang Li 2000, 1521). I suspect the graph here is a loan for tuo , a bundle of fibers.

160 See strip 269. See He Linyi 1998, 257 and 1160. See Hubei, vol. 1, 204, for ex-amples.

161 This graph is difficult to decipher. The right-hand side looks somewhat like a badly formed ; compare Xinyang examples of , esp. strip 2-27, where it accom-panies a caldron vessel (Guo Ruoyu 1994, 97, 99). Another possibility is that the right side should be or .

162 He Linyi 1998, 997, reads this graph as jian, also written “cocoon.” I sus-pect it is a loan for qian , a decorative cloth that goes on top of a coffin (Karlgren 1972, no. 1250d; Wang Li 2000, 1400).

163 See He Linyi 1998, 329.164 These may have referred to actual basins used as mirrors, or to bronze mirrors

(round and square bronze mirrors were found in the northern compartment).

baoshan inventory text 243

Strip 278 reverseThis strip was found on a bronze basin in the southern section of the western compartment. A light comma at the end separates the text from the rest of the strip, which is blank. Chen Wei places this strip at the end of the administrative documents.165

Gu Qiang, person (under) the Ji kitchen officer reported that Ya166 was ordered numerous times to take to the saddle and ride.167

165 Chen Wei 1996a, 231. Weld 1999, 85, describes this section of the documents as “file notations of cases” of certain officials during the year 317.

166 For transcriptions of the names, see He Linyi 1993, 60. He reads the graph as originally written as over a , a graphic variant for rou and loan for You , a place once north of Xiangyang, Hubei. I suspect that the graph was in fact meant and may have represented an end of the year sacrifice. It is likely that since dou can be read as chu (“kitchen”) that this is an official in charge of food sacrifices, similar to jidou (jichu) found elsewhere in Chu inscriptions; see Cook 1995. In the Baoshan administrative texts there is a dadouyin (strip 139), a douyin of Zhengyang (strip 173), and a jidou (strip 194). The name Ya was written with an added element.

167 The last two words are difficult to decipher. Both were originally written with the element. The graph is found in the Suixian tomb inventory texts for an (“saddle”), which in the combination He Linyi 1998, 965, explains as meaning to ride a chariot. We find the combinations (the latter graph sometimes written with the added element) in Xinyang and Wangshan tomb inventory texts (see He Linyi 1998, 558), referring to a “mount” (see He Linyi 1998, 146).

appendix two244

168 The “Collected Register [Investigations]” section; Weld 1999, 85.169 Possibly a name, see strips 9, 13; and Hubei, vol. 1, n. 37, which claims the sec-

ond word refers to a Qi bamboo text, but does not explain.

Strip 440-1This strip was among a pile of blank strips in the northern compartment. The content is similar to administrative strips 1-18.168

[Broken] Gu Shi?169

baoshan inventory text 245

2. BAMBOO PLAQUE

This plaque made of a split bamboo was found in the northern compart-ment. There is no punctuation. Much of the content is repeated from strips 267 onward but uses different graphic variants and a different ar-rangement of the phrases. Generally the scribe for this section seems a poor copyist.

Front side of plaque, three lines of text:

(1)

(2)

appendix two246

170 The graph is not clear but it looks like a combination of and . 171 I take fen, originally written with a element, as an alternative measure word

to cheng for chariots. He Linyi 1998, 1359, suggests that perhaps it referred to the use of fragrant wood.

172 See strip 276. For the pheasant-feather chariot apron, see also strips 268, 273. For the phrase “red metal linchpins and white metal shaft-ends” see strips 272, 273. From comparison with strips 272, 273, 276, we can assume that cha must be zhi .

173 The graph was for .174 The word you is written here as and under a .175 The word is written here as with a element.176 See strip 269.177 See strip 270.178 See strips 271, 276.179 The two graphs are poor copies of graphs for ; see similar phrases

in strips 270, 272, 276, 277.

(3)

(1) In the year that Grand sima Nao Hua saved Fu, Xiang month, on Bingxu day (23), Hai170 Yin gave one leading war chariot171 with water buffalo-skin yokes with green silk trim, side boards with ties of multi-colored silk threads gathered (together), hanging trim, (2) purple coffin ropes, tied together ropes, purple leather cover for the chariot box-front and leather horse breast-strap, wild dog and panda-skin horse cruppers, purple armor bag bound together with purple cords, tiger-skin covered bow case, a pheasant-feather chariot apron, white metal linchpins and red metal shaft-ends with dangling ties on the ends, hand drums.172 The (chariot) carries on it a red flag with 140 strips and kingfisher feathers on top, an animal-tail center pole with red and white silk, seven three-sided lances, a chariot double-bladed dagger-axe173 with black and white feathers, one three sided lance with (3) its cover and cord, five three sided lances with barbs, three three-sided lances, one umbrella pole with174 feathers on top, one (set of) armor of blended short-haired animal (skins) with helmet,175 rope of green176 strings, on the driver’s right two (sets of) red (dyed) elephant-hide armor each with a helmet, purple ropes177 four horse-armor masks178 with numinously radiant knotted head ornament179

baoshan inventory text 247

with nine bundles,180 rope reins,181 one decorated drum with one light-red gathered bag and a decorated drumstick182

Upper side of reverse side of plaque:

One (set of) hand drums? with tassels, numinously radiant chariot flag,183 one chariot on which are... all... .

Lower side of reverse side of plaque:

The (person) in charge of storage ... .

180 See the phrase on strip 277 and discussion in n. 159, above. The use of a nu-meral before tuo, as in strip 277, makes more sense than the word gao [L*k�kw] here. I suspect gao was a loan for jiu [L*kj�gwx] (“nine”).

181 See strip 270.182 See strip 270.183 See strips 272, 276.

APPENDIX THREE

WANGSHAN TOMB 1 DIVINATION TEXT

The following transcription is adapted from Shang Chengzuo (1995). I have made some changes in Shang’s punctuation and transcription based on the Baoshan text. The repetitive nature of the text allows one to fill in some missing characters (placed inside brackets). A transcription by Zhu Dexi, Qiu Xigui, and Li Jiahao of strip fragments in a different order is available in appendix 2 of Hubeisheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 1996. Strip 93, below, likely belongs to an administrative text.

appendix three250

1. [Broken] [ ] [ ] [ broken] [During the year when Kunchu, a guest from [?]-chang] visited the king

at Zaiying, on Xingyi month, Guihai day, a prayer sacrifice to….1

2. [broken]offered a proposition prayer to the Residence Earth God and Rong2

present one ewe each…

3. [broken]performed an exorcism to get at its source, performed a repayment

sacrifice to Chu [King or founder spirit]…

4. [Broken] [ ] [a ritualist used some divination method] to divine for Shao Gu about

his service to

5. [broken]the king, from one Xingyi month to (the next Xingyi)

6. [Broken] [ ] [broken]…(still) has concerns regarding his person and residence, as well as

(his intended goals)…

7. [Broken] [broken]…Is it that he (still) has spiritual blame. (the ritualist) divined…

8. [Broken] …(to) Xingyi month he has been suffering, could it be that he has

somehow incurred great spiritual blame? In order to speedily cure it….

9. [Broken] [broken]…(the ritualist divined and determined that although) there is no great

spiritual blame, the affliction has been slow to heal. There is a curse. He performed an exorcism to get at its source. He performed a repayment sacrifice (to) the North Child with a fat gelded pig, presented it with wine and food…3

1 See Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 238.2 Shang notes that the original graph is similar to the graph for rong (“meld”) in

the name of Chu god Zhu Rong, found in the Chu Silk Manuscript.3 See Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 244.

wangshan divination text 251

10. [Broken]

…and so cannot eat, his heart nauseous,4 his bowel and torso afflicted. Could it be that he could still be speedily cured and not somehow have incurred blame? (The ritualist) divined it (saying)5

11. [broken]With regard to spiritual blame, the prognosis is auspicious, but the

affliction is somewhat slow to heal so there is spiritual blame and some concerns regarding….

12. [Broken] … do not see good fortune.6 Could it not be exorcised to get at its

source? to quickly (cure) his chest, pray for speedy recovery then repay the recovery.

13. A speedy recovery requires the speedy recovery payment.

14. [Broken] [broken]

…(the ritualist) uses a stalk method to divine on Shao Gu’s behalf: he already (suffers from) abscesses with nausea and no appetite. Could it not be a great spiritual blame? (The ritualist) divined about it and said…7

15. [Broken] [broken]…affliction…

16. [Broken] [broken]..affliction, still …

17. [Broken] [broken]…on an Yihai day, Ke Ping (used X method to divine on Shao Gu’s

behalf)

18. [Broken] [broken]…Ke Ping…

4 The graph for e is written variously, sometimes with the phonetic or , which suggests the possibility that the word is not e but fu (“abdomen”).

5 See Zhu Dexi et al.1996, 240; Liu Xinfang 1998, 37.6 See Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 240.7 See Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 238, 253-54.

appendix three252

19. [Broken] [ broken]…Gui Qu divined about it saying, auspicious, on a Bingding day there

will be improvement…

20. [Broken] …(Gui Qu?) divined about it saying, auspicious.

21. [Broken] …Dong8 divined about it saying, auspicious.

22. [Broken] [space] …(divined about it saying) auspicious (Shao) will not die. (The ritu-

alist) divined about it saying, auspicious. (spirits of the) Mountains and Rivers.

23. [Broken] [broken]…Sire ancestral (spirit)…

24. [Broken] [broken]…Pingye. (The ritualist) through his will, beating (the ghost), and re-

leased (Shao) from those People Below. “He shall not die” …9

25. [Broken] [ ] [broken]

On the year when (the guest from …[?]-chang, Kun)qu, visited the king at Zaiying, on Xingyi month, Guiwei day, Wei.

26. [Broken] [ ] [ ] [broken](On the year ) when (the guest from ….chang, Kunqu,) visited the

king at Zai(ying)….

27. [Broken] [broken]…on a Jiazi day…

28. [Broken] ….on a Jisi or Jiazi day, perform the inner purification ritual…

8 The graph for the name is composed of over a and . I arbitrarily chose Dong as the phonetic.

9 Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 246, reads as . The meaning is uncertain. I take yue as a loan for ye , as in the Chu place-name. I read zhuang as an abbreviation for

jiang .

wangshan divination text 253

29. [Broken] [broken]…purification ritual…

30. [Broken] [broken]…purification ritual…

31. [Broken]

On a Jiyou day, Ke Ping divined about his not yet having rank, (ask-ing) shall he speedily achieve the affairs (he wishes): “Auspicious, on a Ji day there will be happiness for his ambitions and for his affairs.”

32. [Broken] [X]…happiness for him…

33. [Broken]

…(some concerns with regard to his) ambitions and affairs. He per-formed an exorcism to get at its source. He performed a mortuary feast and sent a jade pendant semi-circlet to the Great King of the East and offered the proposition prayer to (the spirit of) the Residence Walkway with one white dog, wine and food…

34. [Broken] [broken]…on a Jiyou day…

35. [Broken] …(the ritualist) divined about his not yet having rank, (asking) shall

he speedily achieve the affairs (he wishes): “Auspicious, he will achieve the affairs (he wishes) but there is a slight...

36. [space] concern regarding his person and his residence. There is a curse. He

performed an exorcism to get at its source. The ritual to the Sire Lord is already complete.

37. [broken]There will be happiness with regard to his person and (his resi-

dence)…

38. [broken]speedily achieve the affairs (he desires)…

appendix three254

39. [Broken] [broken] …(the ritualist used the chang) xiao method to divine for Shao Gu,

who, running about serving the king and the Grandees…

40. [Broken] [broken]

(sent to Sheng Huan) King, King Zhao a jade pendant semi-circlet each; for Sire of Dongling a jade pendant semi-circlet; perform a repay-ment sacrifice to the Earth Lord of the Residence with one male gelded pig. Qu...10

41. [Broken] [broken]

..auspicious; to Grand Unity (send) one ewe, to the Lord Earth and the Controller of Fate, one ram each; to the Grand Water one jade semi-circlet; perform the repayment sacrifice and prayers to the Two (Children of) Heaven….11

42. [Broken] [broken]… offered the proposition prayer to Grand Unity with one jade semi-

circlet; to the Lord Earth and the Controller (of Fate)…

43. [Broken] [broken]…(sacrifice to) the Controller of Fate a pig….

44. [Broken] [broken]… offered the proposition prayer to the Northern Child

45. [Broken] [broken]…(present) one small jade semi-circlet, offered the proposition prayer

to Dongling…

46. [broken]to the Northern Child of the King (and…) a pig each, with wine and

food, present outside the city gates. (The ritualist) through his will beats (the spirit) and releases (Shao Gu) from Residence (spirit’s curse).

10 See Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 243. I suspect that was a graphic variant for huan .11 See Liu Xingfang 1996, p. 35.

wangshan divination text 255

47. [Broken] [ ] [ ] [broken]The year that the guest from [?]-chang, Kunqu, visited the king at

Zaiying, Cuan month, Guichou day….

48. [Broken] [broken]…on a Guichou or Jiayin day…

49. [broken] at dusk Cuan month’s…

50. [Broken] [broken]…it. Guan… .

51. [Broken] [broken]…Guan received and repeated (X’s exorcism) to…

52. [Broken] [broken]…Cuan month, Bingchen day, Deng Xi used the shao (bao

method)…

53. [broken]Cuan month, Dingsi day, (the ritualist) for Shao Gu offered the propo-

sition prayer to the Great King of the East, Sheng…

54. [Broken] [broken] …(sacrifice for….) king, a black water buffalo each, present as food of-

ferings; a secondary sacrifice and prayer to Former Lord Sire of Dongling with a black water buffalo, presented as food offerings….

55. [Broken] …for Shao Gu offered the proposition prayer to the day of the grandee

(?) and at the same time12 offered the proposition prayer to the Walkway with a white dog; a secondary sacrifice and prayer to Royal Descendant Sang with a pig…

56. [Broken] [ ]…offered the proposition prayer to the Lord of Zailing with a fat pig

and wine and food; offered the proposition prayer to the Northern Child with a fat gelded pig and wine and food, for a speedy recovery and (the ritualist will) repay (the spirits) for it.

12 Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 244, 271, here have “present a ju sacrifice and prayer to the private shaman of the Grandee.”

appendix three256

57. [Broken] ,

…(not) die, but there’s a curse. Perform an exorcism to get at its source, offer the proposition prayer to Grand Unity with one pendant jade semi-circlet, to the Earth Lord and the Controller of Fate, one small jade semi-circlet each, to Grand Water one pendant jade semi-circlet; Gui Qu…

58. [Broken] ……(Gui) Qu (used the baojia method to divine on Shao Gu’s be-

half): he already has abscesses, so that his heart flutters to the point that he cannot move his mind or his body, his skin … .13

59. [Broken] [broken]…Gui Qu used the baojia method to divine on Shao Gu’s behalf: he

is already nauseous so that he is blocked and has diarrhea …..14

60. [Broken] [broken]…baojia method to divine on Shao Gu’s behalf; already his heart…

61. [Broken] [broken]…but it is a little slow to heal. (The ritualist) performed an exorcism

to get at its source and then turned to Gui Qu’s exorcism and offered the proposition prayer to…

62. [Broken] Gui

63. [broken]Qiu used (a divination method)…

64. [broken]On a Jiwei day there will be improvement, on a Xinchou day recovery

65. [Broken] ….on X-chen day improvement, on Gengshen day

66. [broken]on Yichou day, perform a repayment sacrifice and prayer to the Former

Lord with a black water buffalo; on Jiwei day perform the X-sacrifice, on Gengshen day perform the inner purification ritual…15

13 See Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 238, 256.14 See Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 239, 256.15 Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 224, 273. For the “X-sacrifice,” see my discussion, chap.

3, p. 73, n. 112.

wangshan divination text 257

67. [Broken] [broken]..on an Yichou day…

68. [broken]perform a repayment sacrifice and prayer to the Great (King) of the

East….

69. [Broken] [broken]at dusk return a jade to (the Great King of the) East….

70. [Broken] [broken]…return a jade to the Great King of the East. On Jisi day perform

the inner purification ritual.

71. [Broken] …sacrifice is complete, on a Jiaxu or Jisi day perform the inner pu-

rification ritual.16

72.

On a Xinwei day performed the outside purification ritual. He per-formed an exorcism to get at its source. Xu Ta divined about it saying, “Auspicious.” He thereupon used the huangling method to repeat (X-di-viner’s earlier exorcism) and perform the same exorcism. The repayment sacrifice and prayers to the Sage King and King Zhao are completed. On a Jiwei day, (Xu Ta) performed the repayment sacrifice and prayer to Royal Descendant Zhuo…17

73. [broken]Xu Ta used the shao (X-method)….

74. [Broken] [broken]…(repayment sacrifices to) the Sage King and King Zhao are com-

pleted.

75. [Broken] [broken]

…(sacrifice to) the Sage King, King Zhao, the Sire of Dongling, with a black water buffalo each, and present in sacrifice as food offer-

16 The graph for ji is written as jiu with a element; Zhu Dexi et al 1996, 244, 273.

17 Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 242.

appendix three258

ings. Quickly sacrifice a gelded male pig to the Earth Lord with wine and food. (The ritualist) divines about it (saying), “(There is) blame. The long term prognosis…”

76. [Broken] [broken] The prayer sacrifice to the Sire (of Dongling) is complete but the re-

payment sacrifice has not yet been completed.

77. [Broken] [broken]already presented as food offerings…

78. [Broken] [space] [space] [space] to the Sun and Moon, prepare food offerings, to Sire of Dongling…

[space] prepare a tasting ritual and wine, on Jiaxu day, the sacrifice was complete...sacrifice18

79. [Broken] [broken] …Moon, prepare food offerings…

80. [Broken] …to the Sire of Dongling, Ping, Northern Child, the Walkway…

81. [broken] perform an exorcism; it is not a matter of sacrificing to Zhu

(Rong)…

82. [Broken] [broken]tasting sacrifice…

83. [Broken] [broken] …to the Former…

84. [Broken] [broken] …Former Lord…

85. [Broken] (?),

…to Father Cai (?); offered the proposition prayer to New Father; offered the proposition prayer to Those Innocent Victims; offered the

18 Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 243, 270-71.

wangshan divination text 259

proposition prayer to the Numinous Specters; offered the proposition prayer to the South. There is a curse visible in Harm 19…

86. [Broken] [broken]…for Shao Gu prognosticate: “The long term prognosis is auspicious.

He will not die but there is a curse (in) the North. There is a curse…

87. [Broken] [broken]with New Father…

88. [Broken] [broken]…(sacrifice to) Grand Unity; offered the proposition prayer to Great

Sire…

89. [Broken] [broken] (sacrifice to X-) Sire with one jade pendant semi-circlet

90. [Broken] [ ] [broken]…the long term prognosis is auspicious but there is a curse evident.

(The ritualist) performed an exorcism to get at its source and divined (using) the huangling method…

91. [broken](The year when) the guest from Qi, Ji Guo, visited (the king)…

92. [Broken] [broken]The year when (X visited the king in) in Zaiying, Xianma month,

Jiyou day, Fan Jizhi using (the Cangjia method prognosticate for Shao Gu)…20

93. [Broken] [broken]...its cause, using bamboo strips to report it, Fan Ji...

94. [broken]on Xianma month...

95. [broken]on Xianma month, Jiyou day, Ke Ping prognosticated for Shao Gu

using the stalk method: already....

19 A place in the night sky?20 See Strip 1 in Zhu Dexi et al.1996, 237-38.

appendix three260

96. [Broken] [broken] ...used the baojia method to prognosticate for Shao Gu: while going

in and out serving the king, ... .

97. [Broken] ... prognosticate for Shao Gu: while going in and out serving the king,

from seeing..

98. [Broken] [broken] ... used the baojia method to prognosticate for Shao Gu: already…

breath..

99. [Broken] [broken]... (used the bao) jia method to prognosticate for Shao Gu: already

100. [Broken] [broken]..slow to heal

101. [broken]......there is decline, slow to heal. He performed an exorcism to get at

its source and offered the proposition prayer to....

102. [broken]There is a curse. He performed an exorcism to get at its source and

offered the proposition prayer to....

103. [Broken] … offered the proposition prayer to the Northern Ancestor with one

semi-circlet of jade; presented an initial sacrifice to Ping with one male pig…Earth Altar. He (performed an exorcism) to get at its source.21

104. [broken] [sacrifice of Lao Tong, Zhu Rong and Yu] Yin each one ewe22

105. [Broken] [broken]The prayer sacrifice to Ping is already complete. The prayer sacrifice

to the Chu Founders is already complete.23

106. [Broken] [broken]he is nauseous and cannot eat...

21 Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 244.22 Ibid.23 Ibid. For Ping, they have lai .

wangshan divination text 261

107. [Broken] [broken]his bowels contracted and his feet and bones are afflicted. Shall it be

that he will still not die? (The ritualist) divined about it: “The long term prognosis is auspicious. He will not die....” 24

108. [Broken] [broken]...bones afflicted. Would it be that he will not...25

109. [broken]There is decline. There is a curse evident. Present a meat and prayer

sacrifice to...26

110. [Broken] ....(from one Xingyi month to another) at the end of the year

111. [Broken] ...at the end of the year...

112. [broken]...on a Renshen day,...already...

113. [Broken] (Shall he not) die? (The ritualist) divined about it and said: “Auspi-

cious.”

114. [Broken] [broken] (The ritualist) divined about it and said: “Auspicious.”

115. [broken](The ritualist) divined about it and said: “Auspicious.”

116. [Broken] [broken]…(not) die. (The ritualist) divined about it....

117. [Broken] [broken] (not) die. (The ritualist) divined about it...mortuary feast offer-

ings….

118. [broken]...die...

24 Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 420. 25 Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 240, read it “head” not “bones.” 26 Zhu Dexi et al. 1996, 240, 262-63.

appendix three262

119. [Broken] [broken] ...(divined) about it and said: “Auspicious....

120. [Broken] [broken]...(divined) about it and said: “Auspicious....

121. [Broken] [broken] ...divined...

122. [Broken] [broken]...auspicious...

123. [Broken] ...auspicious...

124. [Broken] [broken](the long term) prognosis is auspicious. He will not (die). For....

125. [broken]...auspicious. He will not die...

126. [Broken] ...auspicious. He will not...

127. [Broken] [broken]...die...

128. [Broken] [broken] ...with wine and food...

129. [Broken] [broken]as food offerings...

130. [Broken] [broken] ...sacrifice and prayer...

131. [Broken] [ ] [ ] [broken] ...(sacrifice to the Chu founders) Lao Tong, Zhu Rong, (and Yu

Yin)...

132. [Broken] [broken] ...yellow grain offering...

133. [Broken] [broken]...on the fifteenth day.....sacrifice a horse...

wangshan divination text 263

134. [Broken] [broken] on (X) day, perform the purification ritual where he...

135. [Broken] [broken]on (X) day.....

136. [Broken] [broken] ...sacrifice...

137. [Broken] [broken]...on Yichou day...

138. [Broken] ...on Yihai day

139. [Broken] [broken]...on Xinwei day...

140. [Broken] [broken] on a X-wei or Renshen day...

141. [Broken] [broken] ...on Ji-X day...

142. [Broken] [broken]...on X-zi day...

143. [Broken] [broken]...visits...

144. [broken]On a Yibing day, some...

145. [Broken] [broken]...on Rengui day. In Grand Unity, there is a curse.

146. [Broken] [broken]... (perform an exorcism) to get at its (source)...

147. [Broken] [broken]…perform an exorcism (to get at its) source

148. [Broken] [broken] (the ritualist) wills and attacks (the ghost releasing Shao)...

appendix three264

149. [Broken] [broken]...already...

150. [Broken] [broken]...(slow) to heal, there is (a spiritual blockage)...

151. [Broken] ...heal

152. [Broken] ...about it. Not yet...

153. [Broken] [broken]154. [Broken] [broken]155. [Broken] [broken]156. [Broken] [broken]157. [Broken] [broken]158. [Broken] [broken]159. [Broken] [broken]160. [Broken] [broken]161. [Broken] [broken]162. [Broken] [broken]163. [Broken] [broken]164. [Broken] [broken]165. [Broken] [broken]166. [Broken] [broken]167. [Broken] [broken]

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INDEX

acupuncture, 84–85administrative texts, 45n11, 47–48, 150;

and Baoshan divination text, 156n16, 179n81; diviners in, 109; and inven-tory text, 233n118, 243, 244; place-ment of, 13, 60; role of, 10, 12; and Wangshan divination text, 249

agriculture, 44, 140, 141Ai Gong (king of Lu), 64Allan, Sarah, 14, 15, 21, 66–67ancestors, 4, 7, 102–5, 141, 147, 151;

announcements to, 82–83; and divi-nation texts, 70, 159, 164, 167, 174, 201; feasts for, 38, 55; founding, 66, 82, 100, 103, 104, 111–14, 118, 140n49, 176, 199, 260, 262; and ill-ness, 25, 109, 110, 111–14; and Inner and Outer, 68, 69, 70; and Purifica-tion ritual, 76; sacrifice to, 43, 65, 66, 70, 113; sacrifices to, 20; Shang-period worship of, 79–80, 159n25; of Shao Tuo, 4n13, 43, 96, 99–100; and spirit travel, 14, 16; in Wangshan text, 118; in Xichuan Zeng tomb, 142; in Zhou bronze inscriptions, 9n32, 10, 21

animal sacrifice, 44, 46, 65, 80; in Baoshan divination text, 84, 102–5, 108, 110, 158–59, 165, 169; and Five-Phase correlates, 94–99; in Shao Tuo tomb, 48–49; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115

animals: on clothing, 40–41; hybrid, 57, 61, 138–44, 146; in lacquer-box painting, 124–25, 126; on Mawangdui coffin, 143; in Mawangdui paintings, 132; and mourning rituals, 39–41; mythical, 39, 41, 142; and sculpture bases, 53; in Shao Tuo tomb, 57–58, 61–62, 143–44; and spirit travel, 58, 131, 143, 146; terms for, 98; in Tianxingguan Tomb 2, 53, 57–58,

127n132, 143–44; tigers, 39, 40, 41, 108, 141; and time, 146; in Wangshan tombs, 61, 136; wild vs. domestic, 125n126, 142; in Xichuan Zeng tomb, 141; and zhenmushou, 138–39. See also dragons; phoenixes

announcement: gao, 11, 82–83; yiwen, 12–13

Antler and Tongue (zhenmushou) figures, 18, 41, 50n31, 53–54, 136–43

antlers, 146; as bird wings, 139n46, 143, 144

architectural features, 50, 51, 133–34, 136

attendants, figures of, 55, 56, 59, 60, 64n72, 67, 222

Ba people, 26Bai Qi, 1bamboo plaque (Shao Tuo tomb), 8n29,

145, 150, 245–47; and inventory strips, 220n40, 230n99, 232n113, 233n119, 234nn124,125,126

bamboo strips: blank, 60, 62n67, 63n68; Guodian texts on, 3n11, 21, 22, 23, 24, 31n60, 92n59; nicks on, 233n121; recording of, 65n75; in Shao Tuo tomb, 8, 58, 59, 60, 62n67, 63n68; Yunmeng Qin, 154n4, 178n72. See also particular texts

Baoshan Chumu (Hubei Provincial Jing-Sha Railroad Archaeological Team), 18

Baoshan divination text, 13, 83–118, 149, 150, 153–210; animal sacrifice in, 84, 102–5, 108, 110, 158–59, 165, 169; beating of ghosts in, 171, 177, 205, 207, 209; and bronze in-scriptions, 159n23, 163n37, 164n42, 179n80, 183n88, 186n92, 187n94; calendar in, 115–18, 154n4, 165n45; on curses, 182, 184, 194, 197, 201,

index282

208; on divination methods, 168, 171, 174, 176, 178, 180, 182, 189, 191, 193, 195, 197, 198, 200, 202, 204, 206, 208; events in, 95–97; exor-cism in, 95, 155, 156n16, 163, 169, 171, 174, 176, 179, 181, 182, 189, 194, 196, 198, 201, 202, 204, 206; food offerings in, 160, 163, 164, 165, 168, 174–75, 183, 186, 201, 203, 206; and Guicang, 107, 163n33; hexagrams in, 162, 171, 191, 195, 200, 204; and seasons, 115–18; and Shang oracle bones, 91n55, 164n42, 196n108; on Shao Tuo’s illness, 18, 76, 109–18, 178–82, 184, 198, 200–202, 204, 206, 208; and Shijing, 163nn36,37, 169n51; and Shuihudi Day Books, 118, 156n16, 157n19, 181n82; spiritual blame in, 158, 168, 171, 172, 174, 176, 189, 191, 193, 195, 197; terms in, 98–118; and Yijing, 157n20, 163n33, 171n56, 195n106; and Yin-Yang Five Phases system, 91–92, 95–97, 107, 114, 116–18; and Zhouli, 156nn16,18, 159n23, 163n36, 169n51; and Zuozhuan, 154n4, 163n33, 174n66

Baoshan Inventory Text, 10, 95, 149, 150, 211–47; and administrative texts, 233n118, 243, 244; chariot equipment in, 144, 229–39, 240, 241, 246, 247; and eastern compartment, 55, 212–18, 225–28; and northern compartment, 219–24; and southern compartment, 219–42; and western compartment, 60, 219–24, 229–42, 243; and Inner and Outer, 63–64; vs. items in tomb, 11, 12, 144

Baoshan Tomb 2 (Shao Tuo tomb), 4, 6, 47–63; animals in, 48–49, 57–58, 61–62, 143–44; bamboo strips in, 8, 58, 59, 60, 62n67, 63n68; chariot equipment in, 144–45, 146, 149; cof-fins in, 48, 50–63, 133; contents of, 10, 17, 30, 41–42, 50–63; daily-use items in, 35, 38, 47–48, 55, 59–60; dragon-headed staff in, 60, 61, 142; and Five Phases, 47, 149–50; lack of zhenmushou in, 136n31, 142; lacquer-box painting in, 18, 62, 76, 77, 119–28; as vehicle, 145; vs. Wang-shan tomb, 135–36. See also Baoshan Inventory Text

Baoshan Tomb layout, 10, 13, 30, 41, 49, 55–63, 145, 149; eastern compart-ment, 55–58, 134, 212–18, 225–28; northern compartment, 18, 55, 60–63, 76, 77, 119–28, 219–24, 245; southern compartment, 55, 58–59, 219–42; western compartment, 55, 59–60, 219–24, 229–42, 243

birds, 59, 62, 136, 146, 163n33; ant-ler-winged, 139n46, 143, 144; on frog-bird base, 53, 54, 58; hybrid man-, 85, 132, 139, 144; juqu, 222; on lacquer-box painting, 119, 124, 125, 126, 127n132; spirit (lingniao), 39, 40; on Zeng Hou Yi coffin, 133, 134. See also phoenixes

blame, spiritual (jiu), 64, 71, 95; in Baoshan divination text, 158, 168, 171, 172, 174, 176, 189, 191, 193, 195, 197; and curses, 81–82; and Day Books, 87, 88; and divination cycles, 83; and illness, 80–81, 90, 91, 111, 116; and Purification ritual, 72–73; in Shuihudi Day Books, 114; in Wang-shan divination text, 250, 251, 258

the body (gongshen, shen), 71–72, 90; piercing of, 84–85, 98

Brashier, Kenneth, 17, 20bu (to divine), 64–65Buddhism, 146bureaucracy, heavenly, 14–15, 46, 68burial grounds, 2–3, 8, 133; as Sacred

Plot, 20, 42, 55, 63–66; in wilds, 20, 46

Cai Gongzi Jia (New Father; Jia of the Sire Cai line), 99, 113, 160n28; in Baoshan divination text, 159, 163, 164, 167, 174, 201; and Wangshan divination text, 258, 259

Cai Ying (Jinan city, Jiangling), 1–2, 8calendar, 4, 38, 140, 146, 151, 155n4;

in Baoshan divination text, 115–18, 154n4, 165n45; Chu vs. Qin, 92–93; in Wangshan divination text, 116–18; and Yin-Yang Five Phases system, 7, 85–90, 92–95, 149

Central Drainspout (impluvium; zhongliu), 32n64, 36n88, 45, 46, 48

Chang E (moon goddess), 132Changsha (Hunan), 34n77, 41n116, 108,

135. See also Mawangdui

index 283

Chao Fulin, 45chariot equipment: in inventory texts,

240, 241, 246, 247; in Shao Tuo tomb, 55, 58–59, 128, 144–45, 146, 149; in Tianxingguan Tomb 2, 136; in Wangshan tomb, 135

chariots, 50, 124; in inventory texts, 229–39; in lacquer-box painting, 125, 126; and spirit travel, 68, 130, 151; tombs as, 50n33, 128, 133, 145; in Xincai tomb, 67, 68

Chen Peifen, 76n125Chen Wei, 46, 144, 155n4, 219n35,

243; on Baoshan divination text, 164nn40,43, 165n45, 179n80

Chen Yi (diviner), 105, 191, 200, 201Chengzhou city, 44n4Chenjia dashan painting, 40Chi You, 40, 62n64, 140Childs-Johnson, Elizabeth, 139, 142,

159n23Chu, state of: calendar of, 92–93; capital

of, 1–2; culture of, 18, 26, 30, 41, 131; founder gods of, 82, 100, 103, 104, 111–14, 118, 140n49, 176, 199, 260, 262; illness in, 25–26; kings of, 2, 6, 27, 67n84, 72n109, 73, 80, 82, 100, 117, 205; Qin attack on, 86. See also Zhao (king of Chu)

Chu Silk Manuscript, 34, 44, 107, 108n94, 138, 157n19, 250n2; and Five Phases, 135n27, 149; trees in, 134–35

Chuci (elegies of Chu, Songs of the South; Qu Yuan), 16, 28, 127, 134, 174n64; on spirit travel, 26–27, 130; and zhen-mushou, 137n33, 138. See also “Li Sao”

Chucun burial ground (Shanxi), 133Chunyu Yi, 72n107clothing: animal patterns on, 40–41; in

Baoshan divination text, 194, 203; in chariots, 144; in inventory texts, 219–20, 222, 223–24; in lacquer-box painting, 119–22, 124, 125, 127; in Mawangdui painting, 123; and mourning rituals, 32–33; as offering, 80, 99, 103, 111, 128; and prepara-tion of corpse, 35, 36, 37; sacrifice of, 95–97; in Shao Tuo tomb, 50, 59–60, 149; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 111, 114, 115; terms for, 99

coffins: as home, 134; inner, 50–53, 68,

132–33; at Mawangdui, 133, 134, 143; and Mawangdui paintings, 132–33; outer, 54–63, 68; pit beneath, 48; in Shao Tuo tomb, 48, 50–63, 133; and spirit travel, 67–68; in Wangshan tomb, 135, 136; in Zeng Hou Yi tomb, 133–34

Confucianism (Ruism), 3, 23, 24, 25, 80, 92n59

Confucius, 36n88, 131, 133; on death, 29, 35n83

consumption of flesh, 41, 50, 53, 58, 139, 140, 142

containers: for alcohol, 57, 58n50, 213n3, 214; bamboo, 56; in Baoshan inventory lists, 212–13, 216–18; bas-kets, 61, 217–18; lacquered, 18, 56, 57, 62, 76, 77, 108, 119–28; leather, 57; pig-dragon box, 53, 57–58. See also vessels, bronze

Controller of Disaster (Sihuo), 97, 100, 110, 115, 174, 175

Controller of Fate (Siming), 82, 97, 100; in Baoshan divination text, 174, 175, 198, 202; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 110, 115; in Wangshan divination text, 118, 254, 256

corpse, preparation of, 34–37Corpse (shi) ritual, 39–40, 64, 66,

109n100, 166n46correlative cosmology, 34, 47, 85–90,

94–99, 114. See also Yin-Yang Five Phases system

cosmic (divination) boards (shi), 33–34, 108, 135n27, 145, 179n76

Cullen, Chris, 198n112curses: in Baoshan divination text, 182,

184, 194, 197, 201, 208; and blame, 81–82; and Day Books, 87; and divi-nation, 84, 107; exorcism of, 79n2, 80, 83; and female magicians, 88n36; and ghost-beating, 84–85, 192, 194, 201; and illness, 79–80, 86, 91; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 95, 110, 111, 112, 114; in Shuihudi Day Books, 114; in Wangshan divination text, 250, 253, 256, 259, 260, 261

Dai, Lady, 123, 124, 131Dangyang, 3Dao (king of Chu), 67n84, 117

index284

Daodejing, 24Daoism, 3, 19, 22–24, 69, 92n59, 135,

147, 151; mortuary rituals of, 12, 13; and spirit travel, 16, 17, 131

Day Books (rishu), 69, 86–90, 105n80, 108; and Yin-Yang Five Phases sys-tem, 69, 91–92. See also Shuihudi Day Books

de (power, life force), 21, 22, 23, 24, 25death (si): Confucius on, 29, 35n83; defi-

nitions of, 19–20; god of, 85, 137n33; pollution of, 35; of Shao Tuo, 18

Demattè, Paola, 139Ding Shan, 45directions, 5, 33–36, 150; of burial, 2–3,

31, 33n74; and Five Phases, 94, 95; in lacquer-box painting, 119, 126; in Shao Tuo tomb, 15, 47, 134, 149; and spirit travel, 14–15, 33, 130; and trees, 135; in Wangshan text, 118. See also Four Regions

divination: and ancestors, 43; and curses, 84, 107; cycles of, 83–84, 146; failure of, 44, 210; on illness, 26, 27, 109–18; and jade offerings, 65–66; and liubo game, 126n128, 129; and Purification ritual, 72–73; and Sacred Plot, 63, 64; and spiritual blame, 81, 83; and Yin-Yang Five Phases sys-tem, 86, 93

divination boards. See cosmic (divina-tion) boards

divination events, 83–84, 102–5divination methods, 83–84, 101–9, 155,

158, 162; in Baoshan divination text, 168, 171, 174, 176, 178, 180, 182, 189, 191, 193, 195, 197, 198, 200, 202, 204, 206, 208; hexagrams, 34, 83n16, 91, 92, 106, 107; stalk, 34n79, 105, 106, 108; stem and branch signs, 86; tortoise shell, 34n79, 64–65, 67, 81, 105, 106, 108; in Wangshan divination text, 106n84, 251, 254, 256, 257, 259, 260; and Yin-Yang, 101, 106

divination texts, 4, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17; on illness, 25, 76; on Inner and Outer, 69, 70, 71; on spirits, 27, 41–42, 44, 79; Xincai, 64, 67, 81–82, 83, 101n79, 106n84, 109, 117n112. See also Baoshan divination text; Wangshan

divination textdiviners, 8, 97, 109–18, 129; calendar of,

151; and Five Phases system, 17, 149; list of, 105; methods of, 101, 105; and music, 109n99; and shamans, 109n98; in Wangshan text, 117; in Xincai text, 101n79, 109. See also par-ticular individuals

Dongling (Eastern Mound), 65n75Dongling lian’ao Zifa, 70, 96, 100, 108;

in Baoshan divination text, 164, 171, 187–88, 202–3; and Shao Tuo’s ill-ness, 109, 110, 113, 114

Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, Vera, 13dragon-tiger motif, 108, 141dragons, 39, 40, 41, 142, 151; in lacquer-

box painting, 121, 127; at Mawang-dui, 132, 134; on pig-dragon box, 57; in Shao Tuo tomb, 50, 52, 53, 62, 133, 146; in Zeng Hou Yi tomb, 133; and zhenmushou, 137, 138

Duan Yucai, 19n2

E Jun Qi tallies, 155n10, 158n23Earth Altar (she), 43–45, 48n26, 70n93,

100, 141; in Baoshan divination text, 96, 110, 112, 115, 171, 207; sacrifices to, 47n22, 49, 96, 110; in Wangshan text, 118, 260; and Xincai text, 82n14; of zhou, 44

earth spirits, 43–45, 49, 70, 73, 100–101, 130, 137, 141; in Baoshan divination text, 96–97, 163, 169, 174, 179, 196, 198, 202; female, 43n3; in Mawangdui paintings, 132; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 110, 114, 115; tubo (god of death), 137n33; tulou (Earth Cricket), 138; in Wangshan divination text, 250, 254, 256, 258

Eastern Han period, 85E’ling Jun inscriptions, 166n46elites, Chu, 4, 8, 25, 30, 71, 109; and

Inner and Outer, 69–70; literacy of, 92n59; tombs of, 2–3, 10, 67

Erya, 73n112ethnic groups, 2, 26exorcism, 40, 62, 66, 70, 71, 74, 93; an-

nual, 45, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 140; Baoshan divination text on, 95, 155, 156n16, 163, 169, 171, 174, 176, 179, 181, 182, 189, 194, 196, 198, 201,

index 285

202, 204, 206; calendar of, 85–90; of curses, 79n2, 80, 83; in Daoist mortu-ary rituals, 12, 13; and divination, 84, 101, 107; and Earth Altar, 43, 45; in Han tomb art, 124; and illness, 26, 27, 109–18, 151; Pace of Yu, 69; and piercing of body, 84–85, 98; and preparation of corpse, 37n94; terms for, 98; types of, 102–5; in Wangshan divination text, 250, 253, 256

Fan Sheng (lord of Diyang), 84n20, 150Fangyan, 179n80, 181n82feasts, 15, 20, 28, 37–39, 46, 69, 146;

for ancestors, 38, 55; and Shao Tuo tomb, 47, 48, 55, 58, 134; and Tianxingguan Tomb 2, 136, 137; and Wangshan tomb, 135; and Xichuan Zeng tomb, 142

feathers, 37, 59, 127, 144, 145. See also birds

Fengchu (Shaanxi), 31n58Five Dynasties period, 108Five Jing Kings, 114Five Mountains (Wu Shan), 73, 100, 112,

115, 201Five Phases (wuxing), 4, 6, 23, 24, 33;

in Baoshan divination texts, 95–97; and calendar, 92–95; and Chu Silk Manuscript, 135n27, 149; and direc-tions, 94, 95; and diviners, 17, 149; and Earth Altar, 48n26; and Four Regions, 7, 17, 80n3, 134; and hunt-ing, 140; and Shao Tuo tomb, 13, 47, 149–50; and Shuihudi Day Books, 94, 95, 114, 116. See also Yin-Yang Five Phases system

Five Sacrifices (wusi), 32n64, 45, 70n93, 80n4

flight, spirit, 107, 135, 139, 140, 145, 146. See also spirit travel

food offerings, 58, 99, 128; in Baoshan divination text, 111, 114, 160, 163, 164, 165, 168, 174–75, 183, 186, 201, 203, 206; in Baoshan inventory lists, 214–15, 216–18; and preparation of corpse, 35, 37; and status of gods, 95–97; and Wangshan divination text, 255

Four Directions, 33, 34Four Regions (sifang), 5–8, 10, 15, 24, 26,

33, 44; and the body, 72; and chari-ots, 145; and Chu Silk Manuscript, 135n27; and Five Phases, 7, 17, 80n3, 134, 150; and Inner and Outer, 68; and Shao Tuo tomb, 47, 149; and spirit travel, 129, 130; spirits in, 79; and tomb layout, 13, 66–67; in Wang-shan text, 118; and wilds, 28

frog-bird base, 53, 54, 58Fufeng (Shaanxi), 37n90Furen, 100Furen (New Mother), 100, 163, 175Fusang spirit tree, 107, 133, 134, 135Fuxi, 107, 133

Gao Xingjian, 1Gao Zhi, 219n35ghosts (gui), 19–20, 24, 29, 43, 46, 70,

87; in Baoshan divination text, 171, 177, 205, 207, 209; beating of, 84–85, 98, 113, 155–56, 171, 177, 192, 194, 201, 205, 207, 209; and divination events, 102–5; and illness, 25, 89, 90; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 113, 114, 115; and spirit travel, 20, 27, 146; types of, 90, 100; in Wangshan divination text, 118, 252

Goujian (king of Yue), 135Grand Unity (Taiyi), 65–66, 82, 107,

108; in Baoshan divination text, 174, 179, 198, 202; Occluded (Shi Tai), 97, 100, 110, 111, 114, 171, 190; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 110, 111, 114, 115; and soul flight, 145; in Wang-shan divination text, 118, 254, 256, 259, 263

Grand Water (Da Shui), 97, 100; in Baoshan divination text, 174, 175, 199, 202, 206; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 110, 112, 115; in Wangshan divina-tion text, 118, 254, 256

Gu Ji (diviner), 97, 101, 105, 154, 155, 157, 189; in Baoshan divination text, 174, 175, 190, 198, 199, 201, 202; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 111–12

Guan Beng (diviner), 105, 193, 202, 203Guan Yi (diviner), 101, 105, 208Guangya, 222n60Guanzi, 25Gui Qu (diviner), 252, 256Guicang (Book of Concealmeant), 91,

index286

106, 107, 163n33, 191n100Guo Dewei, 150Guo Moruo, 159n23Guo Pu, 179n80Guodian bamboo-slip texts, 3n11, 21,

22, 23, 24, 92n59Guoyu, 88n36, 163n33

Han period, 20, 43, 72, 84, 108, 140; and Chu culture, 30; correlative cosmol-ogy of, 6, 7, 34, 47, 86, 87, 127; East-ern, 85; mirrors from, 10, 126n128, 127; mortuary ritual in, 29, 32, 33; spirit travel in, 50n31, 130, 131; tomb art from, 31n58, 124, 126–27; tomb contracts in, 46

Harper, Donald, 7, 21, 22, 25, 47n23, 85–86, 92n63

Hawkes, David, 130He Linyi, 73n112healers, 85, 90, 91Heaven, 135, 147; spirit travel to,

131–32, 146hexagrams, 34, 83n16, 106, 107; in

Baoshan divination text, 162, 171, 191, 195, 200, 204; and Day Books, 91, 92

Hicks, Claire, 27n44home. See residenceHou Ji (god of agriculture), 141Hou Tu, 44, 100. See also earth spiritsHouma (Shanxi), 123, 124Hua Mountain, 81, 82Huai (king of Chu), 6, 27, 80Huainanzi, 130, 134, 174n66, 220n36Huan Tan, 1Hui Wen (king of Qin), 81human nature (xing), 22–23, 24hun-soul, 13, 17, 28, 30, 50, 135; travel

of, 127, 133hunpo, 25n36, 29, 55, 130, 133n20. See

also soulhunting, 124, 136, 142–43, 144; in

lacquer-box painting, 125, 127; and spirit travel, 130, 151; in wilds, 28–29; and zhenmushou, 139–40

iatromancy, 85, 86identity, 10, 47, 55, 124; and mourning

rituals, 32, 39–40; social, 20, 21–22, 29. See also status

Ikeda Suetoshi, 19n2illness: and ancestors, 25, 109, 110, 111–

14; in Baoshan divination text, 178–79, 180–81, 182, 184, 198, 200–202, 204, 206, 208; and the body, 71–72; cures for, 90–91; and curses, 79–80, 86, 91; and exorcism, 26, 27, 109–18, 151; and ghosts, 25, 84–85, 89, 90; and Inner and Outer, 42, 70; and ritual calendar, 85–86; and shamans, 25–26; of Shao Tuo, 18, 25–26, 27, 29, 43, 45, 76, 90–91, 95, 96, 109–18, 146, 168, 178–82, 184, 198, 200–202, 204, 206, 208; and spirits, 79–80; and spiritual blame, 80–81, 90, 91, 111, 116; and Wangshan divination text, 251, 256, 260, 261, 264; of Xincai tomb occupant, 70n94; and Yin-Yang Five Phases system, 25, 30–31, 91, 93

impluvium. See Central DrainspoutInner and Outer, 5, 23, 42, 63–77; and

Purification ritual, 72–76; and wilds, 70, 151

Inner Central Earth (nei zhong tu), 45inscriptions: E’ling Jun, 166n46; on Han

mirrors, 10n36; Shang oracle-bone, 79, 83, 91n55, 164n42, 196n108; in Shao Tuo tomb, 59

inscriptions, bronze: on ancestors, 9n32, 10, 21; announcements in, 11, 83; and Baoshan divination text, 159n23, 163n37, 164n42, 179n80, 183n88, 186n92, 187n94; on feasts, 28; and inventory texts, 11–12, 233n118; and Purification ritual, 74; and spirit trav-el, 16; in Xichuan Zeng tomb, 142; Zhou, 5, 9–12, 14, 15, 21, 163n37, 164n42, 187n94, 233n118

insect pupae, 41, 51inventory texts, 4, 10–11; Mawangdui,

224n62; Suixian, 159n25, 235n131, 243n167; and tomb contracts, 46; Wangshan, 243n167; Xinyang, 138n37, 243n167; Yangtian, 220n40; Zeng Hou Yi, 235n131; zhenmushou figure in, 138. See also Baoshan In-ventory Text

jade: in Baoshan divination text, 174, 179; and the body, 71–72; burial suits of, 14n51; on coffins, 134; in corpse’s

index 287

mouth, 37; and divination, 65–66; figurines of, 139; in Mawangdui paintings, 132; as offering, 80, 81, 95, 97, 99, 103, 110, 111, 114, 115, 128; and Purification ritual, 73; Qin tablets of, 82; terms for, 99; and Wangshan divination text, 253, 256, 257, 259; in Wangshan tomb, 135

Jia of the Sire Cai line. See Cai Gongzi Jia

Jiangling (Hubei), 1–2, 22, 138, 147; map of, 9

Jin Hou, 84n19, 110n102Jin Hou tomb (Tianma-Qucun, Shanxi),

37n90Jinan city (Jiangling, Hubei), 1–2, 8Jing, Kings of, 205Jing Hu people, 26Jingmen-area tombs, 2, 92n59Jinqueshan, funeral painting from, 119Jiudian (Jiangling), 92ju sacrifice, 112–13Jun Cuo of Zeng, 141Jupiter (sui), 88n42, 92, 101, 199,

209n134; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 112, 114, 115

kanyu (canopy and chariot) instrument, 145

Ke Guang (diviner), 101, 105, 168, 169, 180

Ke Jia (diviner), 101, 105, 176, 177Ke Ping (diviner), 253, 259Kong Zhongwen, 169n51Kunlun Mountain, 14, 26, 27, 135

lacquer-box painting, 18, 62, 76, 77, 119–28

lacquer containers, 18, 56, 57, 62, 76, 77, 108, 119–128

lacquer screen (Wangshan tomb), 136Lai Guolong, 11, 12, 17Lao Tong (Chu founder god), 82, 100,

113, 176, 199; and Wangshan text, 118, 260, 262

Lewis, Mark, 40, 140Li Jiahao, 138Li Ling, 108, 112, 140n53, 141; on

Baoshan divination text, 156n16, 158n23, 165n45, 181n82, 187n94

“Li Sao” (Encountering [Departing]

Sorrow; Qu Yuan), 19, 26–27, 79, 125, 127, 130

Li Xueqin, 76n125, 176n69Lian Shaoming, 34Liji, 15, 41, 119n116, 131, 142; on bar-

barians, 129n2; on chariots, 239n148; on death, 20, 29; directions in, 14n53; on divination methods, 34n79; on lewd rites, 4n14; on preparation of corpse, 35, 36; on ritual, 29, 33, 75; on shamans, 127n131; on wilds, 46

Ling (king of Chu), 72n109Liu Binhui, 154n4Liu Xinfang, 228n90Liu Yu, 76n125Liu Yuexin, 92liubo game, 126n128, 129, 137, 145Loewe, Michael, 5, 109, 126–27, 132n14,

138, 139, 140Lunyu (Analects), 155n14Luo Zhenyu, 156n16

Major, John, 130, 139Mashan Tomb 1, 40, 142Mattos, Gil, 94n65Mawangdui (Changsha, Hunan), 8,

74n116, 139; banner from, 64n72, 130–31; coffins from, 133, 134, 143; inventory text from, 224n62; paint-ings from, 41n116, 49, 108, 119, 123, 132, 135, 142n58, 147

metamorphosis, 50n34, 51n36, 139, 142ming (brightness, numinous), 21–22mirrors, 10, 126n128, 127, 145, 242Mohism, 3, 23, 24, 25mourning: clothing for, 32–33; period

of, 38–40; rituals of, 39–41Mozi, 220n36Mu (king of Zhou), 27, 128n133, 146Mu tianzi zhuan, 27music, 23, 28, 107, 109n99; and exor-

cism, 84, 98; and funerary ritual, 31, 38; songs, 22, 25, 91; and time, 146

musical instruments: bells, 23–24, 59, 141n54, 142, 159n25; décor on, 139, 143; drums, 146, 240, 247; in Shao Tuo tomb, 48, 55, 56, 59, 60; in Tianxingguan Tomb 2, 137; in Wang-shan tomb, 136; in Xichuan Zeng tomb, 141n54, 142

name banner (mingjing), 142

index288

Nanying (Jinan city, Jiangling), 1–2, 8Nao Hua: in Baoshan divination text,

189, 191, 193, 195, 197, 198, 200, 202, 204, 206, 208; in Baoshan In-ventory Text, 229, 246

Neolithic period, 108New Father. See Cai Gongzi JiaNew Mother. See FurenNew Royal Father. See Simazi YinNickerson, Peter, 12, 13Nine Provinces (jiuzhou), 13, 14Nong Qiang (diviner), 105, 107, 114,

182, 183, 184Nüwa, 107, 133 Occluded Grand Unity (Shi Tai), 97,

100, 110, 111, 114, 171, 190offerings, types of, 102–5. See also par-

ticular typesofficials, 5, 68–69, 85. See also bureau-

cracy, heavenly; divinersomphalos, 14, 15, 69, 135oracle bones, 79, 83, 91n55, 164n42,

196n108

Pace of Yu, 69paintings: Changsha tomb, 41n116,

108; Chenjia dashan, 40; Jinqueshan, 119; on lacquer box, 18, 62, 76, 77, 119–28; Mawangdui, 41n116, 49, 108, 119, 132, 135, 142n58, 147; on Mawangdui banner, 64n72, 130–31

Peng Ding (diviner), 106n84Peng Xian, 79n1personator of deceased (Corpse ritual),

39–40, 64, 66, 109n100, 166n46phoenixes, 39, 40, 41, 142; on coffins,

51, 52, 134; in lacquer-box painting, 127; in Shao Tuo tomb, 62, 133, 143, 146; and spirit travel, 52, 151; in Tianxingguan tombs, 127n132; in Wangshan tomb, 136; in Zeng Hou Yi tomb, 133

Pi Daojian, 138pig-dragon box (Tianxingguan Tomb 2),

53, 57–58, 123Pingye Jun Cheng (Xincai tomb occu-

pant), 67n84, 82, 83, 150Pingye Jun (Wen Pingye Jun; Shao Tuo’s

great great grandfather), 45, 99, 113; in Baoshan divination text, 159, 164,

167, 174, 201po-soul, 17, 29, 30, 50, 67, 133Porter, Deborah, 146prayers, 98, 109, 146; in Baoshan divina-

tion text, 171, 176, 186, 190, 191, 196, 198, 199, 202, 206, 208; calendar of, 151; and divination events, 102–5; and types of sacrifices, 112, 113; and Wangshan divination text, 253, 255

province (zhou), 13, 14, 44–45, 210Purification ritual, 34–35, 37, 80, 117,

151; Inner, 252, 256; Inner and Outer, 72–76; and Wangshan divina-tion text, 252, 253, 256, 263

qi (energies), 4, 7, 20–30, 39, 134; vs. de, 23; and illness, 25, 26, 27, 198n111; and music, 31n60; and shenming, 21–22; and Yin-Yang, 20–21

Qian Xuan, 37n90Qin, state of, 81, 86Qin period, 84Qin Shihuangdi, 131qing (emotion, feelings), 23, 24, 31n60Qu Yi (diviner), 105, 107, 114, 184Qu Yuan, 26–27, 80

residence: coffin as, 134; gods of, 44–46, 49, 60, 70, 96, 100, 110, 111, 115, 163, 171, 174; and Inner and Outer, 69–70, 71, 72n108, 73, 110; tomb as, 16, 50n33, 60, 124, 127, 128, 130–31

“Rhapsody of Sir Vacuous” (Sima Xiang-ru), 129

rishu. See Day Booksrituals, 4, 5, 29–43, 76n125; calendar of,

85–90; and center, 17–18; clothing for, 32–33; Corpse (shi), 39–40, 64, 66, 109n100, 166n46; Daoist, 12, 13; and directions, 33–36; and dying process, 30–32; funeral march, 38, 40; Han period, 29, 32, 33; and identity, 32, 39–40; mourning, 32–33, 39–41; and Officers of the Tumulus, 64; for post-burial mourning period, 38–40; pre-burial, 32–33; and preparation of corpse, 34–37; Ruist, 23, 24; and tomb design, 14; and tomb inventory texts, 10–11; yu (calming), 39; zhaohun (re-suscitation, summoning), 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 129–30; zu (sending-off), 141

index 289

Ruism. See ConfucianismRushou (death god), 40, 85

Sacred Plot (zhao), 20, 42, 55, 63–66, 225

sacrifices: to ancestors, 20, 43, 65, 66, 70, 113; in Baoshan divination text, 84, 95–97, 102–5, 108, 110, 158–59, 165, 169, 179, 196, 201, 205; calendar of, 85–90, 151; of clothing, 95–97; and divination, 14, 84; to Earth Altar, 44, 47n22, 49, 96, 110; Five (wusi), 32n64, 45, 70n93, 80n4; god (di), 7; human, 67, 80, 81; and hunting, 140; Inner and Outer, 66, 70; ju, 112–13; ming and de, 22; and Moism, 24; in mourning period, 38; to nature spir-its, 96n67, 97; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 16, 26, 27, 94–97, 109–18, 146; and spiritual blame, 81; and status, 95–97; terms for, 98–99; types of, 112–13, 118; wine in, 35, 74–76; and Yin-Yang Five Phases system, 93–97. See also animal sacrifice

seasons, 83, 146; and Baoshan divina-tion texts, 115–18; in Chu calendar, 92, 93; and Chu Silk Manuscript, 135n27; and divination, 101, 102–5, 106, 108; and hunting, 140; in lac-quer-box painting, 119; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 114, 115

shamans, 19n5, 40, 62, 107, 127n131, 159n23; and diviners, 109n98; as doc-tors, 85; female, 4n14, 88n36; and ill-ness, 25–26; spirit travel by, 26, 139; and zhenmushou, 137, 139, 140

Shang period, 11, 22n19, 30, 76, 106, 131; ancestor worship in, 79–80, 159n25; cosmology of, 5, 7, 16; oracle-bone inscriptions from, 79, 83, 91n55, 164n42, 196n108; ya-shape in, 15, 67

Shang Yang, 81n12shangdi (high god), 14–15, 43Shanghai slips, 92n59Shangshu (Shujing; Book of History), 14,

83, 159n23Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas),

14, 16, 130, 134, 146, 174n67; zhen-mushou figure in, 137n32, 138

Shao Cheng, 190

Shao Gu, 71–72, 84n20; illness of, 117; in Wangshan divination text, 250, 251, 254, 255, 259, 260. See also Wangshan tombs

Shao Ji (diviner), 105, 165Shao (king of Chu), 82Shao Liang, 190Shao shang family, 45Shao Tuo: ancestors of, 4n13, 43, 96,

99–100; body of, 48; career of, 5–6, 8, 69, 82; death of, 18; face cover-ing of, 37n90; funeral of, 30, 109; illness of, 18, 25–26, 27, 29, 43, 45, 76, 90–91, 95, 96, 109–18, 146, 168, 178–82, 184, 198, 200–202, 204, 206, 208; and lacquer-box painting, 76, 127; name of, 159n24; personal ornaments of, 60–62; sacrifices for, 26, 27, 94–97, 109–18, 146; shrouds of, 41; spirit travel of, 127–28; spiri-tual blame of, 82, 111, 116. See also Baoshan Tomb 2

shen (divine spirit, social identity), 20, 21–22, 29

shenming (spirit illumination), 21–22Shi Beishang (diviner), 101, 105, 158,

164, 174Shi Cai ding, 164n42Shiji, 176n69, 205n127Shijing (Book of Songs), 28, 55n47, 74,

163nn36,37, 169n51Shouchun (Shouxian, Anhui), 2Shuihudi Day Books, 47n23, 86–91, 111,

146; and Baoshan divination text, 118, 156n16, 157n19, 181n82; and Chu calendar, 92; and Five Phases, 94, 95, 114, 116

Shujing (Shangshu; Book of History), 14, 83, 159n23

Shun (sage-king), 39n104Shuowen, 19, 39, 49n27, 141, 214n10,

222n58; and Baoshan divination text, 156n16, 164n42, 201n118, 204n126

sifang. See Four Regionssiji (Registers of the Dead), 13silk, 51, 54, 58, 60, 61. See also Chu Silk

Manuscript; clothingSima Xiangru, 129n1Simazi Yin (New Royal Father; Yin of

the Sima line), 99, 113; in Baoshan divination text, 159, 164, 167, 174,

index290

182, 186, 201snakes: on Mawangdui coffin, 143; in

Mawangdui coffins, 134; in Wang-shan tomb, 136; in Zeng Hou Yi tomb, 133–34; and zhenmushou, 139

So, Jenny, 138Songs of the South. See Chucisoul, 16–17, 20; hun, 13, 17, 28, 30, 50,

127, 133, 135; hunpo, 25n36, 29, 55, 130, 133n20; po, 17, 29, 30, 50, 67, 133; wandering, 38, 41, 50n31, 51, 55, 143. See also spirit travel

space, sacred, 63–77; Inner and Outer, 68–70; and Yin-Yang, 30–31

spirit travel, 14–17; and ancestors, 14, 16; and animals, 58, 131, 143, 146; beyond tomb, 17, 132, 135, 137, 146; and chariots, 68, 130, 151; in Chuci, 26–27, 130; and coffins, 67–68; di-rection of, 14–15, 33, 130; equipment for, 41, 55; and Four Regions, 129, 130; and ghosts, 20, 27, 146; in Han period, 50n31, 130, 131; and horse, 59; and hunting, 130, 151; in lacquer-box painting, 127, 128; and phoenix-es, 52, 151; and pig-dragon box, 58; and po vs. hun souls, 133; by shamans, 26, 139; of Shao Tuo, 127–28, 135; within tomb, 14, 30, 131, 137, 145, 146; and tomb contents, 63, 67–68; topography of, 129–47; and transcen-dence, 131, 132

spirits, 4, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17, 99–101; agricultural, 44, 141; announcements to, 82–83; Chu founder, 82, 100, 103, 104, 111–14, 118, 140n49, 176, 199, 260, 262; and divination events, 102–5; half-animal, 62; and illness, 24, 25, 79, 90–91, 110, 112, 114, 115, 146–47; nature, 82, 90–91, 96n67, 97, 100–105, 110, 112, 114, 115, 118; of province, 44–45; of residence, 44–46, 49, 60, 70, 96, 100, 110, 111, 115, 163, 171, 174; status of, 95–97; in Wangshan text, 118; of wilds, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 100, 110, 115; and Yin-Yang Five Phases system, 115, 116. See also ancestors; earth spirits; particular entities

status, 5, 9, 10, 12, 14, 47; of gods, 95–97; in lacquer-box painting, 124,

125, 127stem-branch system, 7, 86Su (king of Chu), 73Suixian tomb. See Zeng Hou Yi tomb“The Summoning of the hun” (“Zhao

hun”), 129, 130

Taiyi. See Grand Unity“Taiyi Dragon Head Board Classic,” 108“Taiyi sheng shui” (Guodian bamboo

fragment), 21Tang period, 108taotie (monster head), 50, 52, 57, 58Thote, Alain, 124Three Unities (sanhe) system, 86, 92Tianxingguan tombs, 62, 84n20, 135,

150; animals in, 53, 57–58, 127n132, 143–44; pig-dragon box from, 53, 57–58, 123; zhenmushou in, 136–37, 139, 141

tigers, 39, 40, 41, 108, 141time, 7, 146tomb contracts (muquan; zhenmu wen; gao

di ce), 46tomb guardians. See zhenmushoutombs: borders of, 66; as chariots,

50n33, 128, 133, 145; Chu elite, 2–3, 10, 67; clay covering of, 48, 68; contents of, 10, 38, 41, 85; design of, 13, 14, 15, 18, 66–67; Han-period, 31n58, 46, 124, 126–27; as homes, 16, 50n33, 60, 124, 127, 128, 130–31; regional variations in, 67; and spirit travel, 14, 17, 30, 41, 63, 131, 132, 135, 137, 145, 146; texts in, 8–13; Warring States-period, 44; and wilds, 20, 46, 50, 67; Zhou-period, 18, 133. See also particular tombs

transcendence, 53, 131, 132, 139trees: in Chu Silk Manuscript, 134–35;

in lacquer-box painting, 119–22, 125, 126, 146; sculptures of, 53, 135; spirit, 53, 107, 121, 133–36, 139, 141

Two Children of Heaven (Er Tianzi), 97, 100; in Baoshan divination text, 174, 175, 179, 199, 202; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 110, 111, 115; in Wang-shan divination text, 118, 254

vessels, bronze, 39, 55, 56, 60, 123, 139, 214n7; in inventory texts, 225–28,

index 291

243; Shi Cai ding, 164n42; in Xichuan Zeng tomb, 142

Wang Aihe, 17, 68n86, 86, 87Wang Guowei, 156n16Wang Yi, 26n41Wang Zhankui, 83Wangshan divination text, 64, 91,

249–64; and Baoshan divination text, 159n25; calendar in, 116–18; curses in, 250, 253, 256, 259, 260, 261; divi-nation methods in, 106n84, 251, 254, 256, 257, 259, 260; on Purification ritual, 72, 76; spiritual blame in, 250, 251, 258; and Yin-Yang Five Phases system, 118

Wangshan tombs (Jinan, Jiangling), 84n20, 117, 150, 151; and the body, 71–72; contents of, 57, 61, 62, 135–36, 137; inventory texts in, 243n167

Warring States period, 14, 21, 29, 43, 44, 79, 80

weapons, 50, 143, 144; in inventory texts, 222, 240, 241–42, 246; in Shao Tuo tomb, 47, 55, 58–60, 128, 149; in Tianxingguan Tomb 2, 136; in Wang-shan tombs, 135, 137

Wei (king of Chu), 2, 73Wei Mountain (Wei Shan), 97, 101; in

Baoshan divination text, 174, 175, 199, 202; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 110, 115

Wei Zhuang (diviner), 105, 186, 187weiyi (song and dance performance), 22,

25Wen Pingye Jun. See Pingye JunWen Wang (king of Zhou), 74Wen Wang Mu, 74, 76Western Zhou period, 23, 43, 83, 133;

bronze inscriptions from, 14, 15, 21, 163n37, 164n42, 187n94, 233n118

wilds (ye), 8, 16, 17, 62, 71, 72, 142; in Baoshan divination text, 169; vs. cultivated land, 44; gods of, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 100, 110, 115; hunting in, 28–29; and Inner and Outer, 70, 151; in Jiangling region, 147; in lacquer-box painting, 127, 128; and spirit travel, 129; tombs in, 20, 46, 50, 67; in Wangshan text, 118; and zhenmushou, 139, 140

wine, 28; containers for, 57, 58n50, 213n3, 214; as offering, 35; and Puri-fication ritual, 74–76. See also feasts

women, 4n14, 43n3, 67, 88n36, 119, 123Wu Gongzi Chun (Chun of the Sire Wu

line), 99, 113, 159, 164, 167, 174, 201Wu Hong, 49, 124, 130–31, 134, 145Wu (king of Chu), 205Wu people, 26wu (shamans, spirit technicians), 25–26,

88n36. See also shamansWu Sheng (diviner), 105, 171, 172, 192,

195, 196, 204, 205Wu Yang (diviner), 129

xi (male magicians), 88n36Xia (diviner), 185, 187Xia Yu (diviner), 105Xian He Gong, 190Xichuan tombs (Henan), 3, 140–42Xin Fu, 99Xin Mu, 100Xin Wang Fu, 99, 107Xincai tombs (Henan), 15, 84n18, 142,

150; divination text from, 64, 67, 81–82, 83, 97n69, 101n79, 106n84, 109, 117n112; and Inner and Outer, 66, 70n92; and Purification ritual, 73, 117n112; ya-shape of, 67

xing (human nature), 22–23, 24“Xing qing lun” (bamboo text), 22“Xing zi ming chu” (Guodian bamboo

text), 22, 31n60xingde system, 87n31Xinyang Tomb 1, 142; inventory text

from, 138n37, 243n167Xinzheng (Henan), 138n39Xiwangmu (Grandmother of the West),

128n133Xu Ji (diviner), 101, 105, 107, 178, 197,

206, 207Xu Shen, 19Xu Ta (diviner), 257Xuan (king of Chu), 73Xue Xiong (Chu founder god), 82Xunzi, 24, 31n60Xunzi, 50n33

ya-shape (yaxing), 15, 34n77, 52, 67Yang Hua, 10–11, 12, 91Yang Yi, 138

index292

Yangtian Inventory text, 220n40Yates, Robin, 24Yellow Emperor (Huang Di), 140Yellow Springs (huangquan), 14, 38, 134Yi (Changes) texts, 91, 92, 106yi sacrifice, 112–13Yijing (Zhouyi; Classic of Changes), 83n16,

91, 106; and Baoshan divination text, 157n20, 163n33, 171n56, 195n106

Yili, 28n47, 29, 30n58, 35, 36, 38, 39Yin of the Sima line. See Simazi YinYin-Yang, 6, 7, 35, 69, 72; and Baoshan

divination text, 76, 92, 107, 114; and calendar, 89, 93; and divination methods, 101, 106; and illness, 25, 30–31, 91, 115; and Inner and Outer, 30–31, 68; as medical terms, 21; and qi, 20–21; and souls, 16–17, 20, 145; and tombs, 46, 47, 149

Yin-Yang Five Phases system: and Baoshan divination text, 76, 92, 95–97, 107, 114, 116–18; and the body, 72; and Day Books, 69, 91–92; and divination boards, 108; and Four Regions, 150; in Han period, 86, 127; and Inner and Outer, 68; and ritual calendar, 85–90; in Shao Tuo tomb, 149–50; and Wangshan divination text, 118

Ying Hui (diviner), 101, 105, 162, 163, 164, 171, 174

Ying (Jinan city, Jiangling), 1–2, 8yinsi (lewd rites), 4Yu (sage-king), 13Yu Xiong, 176n69Yu Yin (Chu founder god), 100, 113,

176, 199; and Wangshan text, 118, 260, 262; “woman” semantic in graph for, 176n69

Yue people, 26Yueyang fengtu ji, 26Yunmeng Qin bamboo strips, 154n4,

178n72Yupian, 220n40Yutaishan (Jiangling), 138

Zeng family, 140–41Zeng Hou Yi tomb (Suixian, Hubei),

67, 133–34, 138–39; inventory texts

from, 159n25, 235n131, 243n167Zhang Jun, 26Zhanguoce, 189n96“Zhao hun” (The Summoning of the

hun; Chuci), 28, 129, 130Zhao (king of Chu), 4n13, 6, 96, 99,

159n24; in Baoshan divination text, 158, 164, 165, 174, 202; and Shao Tuo’s illness, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114; in Wangshan divination text, 118, 254, 257

zhao (Sacred Plot), 20, 42, 55, 63–66, 225

zhaohun (resuscitation, summoning) ritual, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 129–30

Zheng Xuan, 39zhenmushou (tomb guardians), 18, 41,

50n31, 53–54, 136–43; evolution of, 138; in Xichuan Zeng tomb, 141–42

Zhijiang Qingshan tombs, 2zhongren (Officers of the Tumulus),

63–64Zhongshan, 73n112; Prime Minister of,

75Zhou period, 4, 6, 18, 81, 106, 139;

bronze inscriptions from, 5, 9–12, 21; and Inner and Outer, 68, 151. See also Warring States period; Western Zhou period

zhou (province, district), 13, 14, 44–45, 210

Zhouli, 29, 40, 63, 66, 75; and Baoshan divination text, 156nn16,18, 159n23, 163n36, 169n51; on Earth Altar, 44; on illness, 25, 85–86; on Inner and Outer, 68, 69; and inventory texts, 214n14, 228n92

Zhu Rong (Chu founder god), 82, 100, 113, 140n49, 176, 199; and Wangshan text, 118, 260, 262

Zhuangzi, 19Zhuangzi, 21, 24Zou Yan, 7zouyu (mythical animal), 39, 41, 142Zuozhuan, 64, 72n109, 80, 84; and

Baoshan divination text, 154n4, 163n33, 174n66; and Inner and Outer, 69, 70; on Yin-Yang, 20–21

CHINA STUDIES

ISSN 1570–1344

1. Berg, D. Carnival in China. A Reading of the Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan.

2002. ISBN 90 04 12426 8

2. Hockx, M. Questions of Style. Literary Societies and Literary Journals in

Modern China, 1911-1937. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12915 4

3. Seiwert, H. Popular Religious Movements and Heterodox Sects in Chinese

History. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13146 9

4. Heberer, T. Private Entrepreneurs in China and Vietnam. Social and Polit-

ical Functioning of Strategic Groups. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12857 3

5. Xiang, B. Transcending Boundaries. Zhejiangcun: the Story of a Mi-

grant Village in Beijing. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14201 0

6. Huang, N. Women, War, Domesticity. Shanghai Literature and Popular

Culture of the 1940s. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14242 8

7. Dudbridge, G. Books, Tales and Vernacular Culture. Selected Papers on

China. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14770 5

8. Cook, C.A. Death in Ancient China. The Tale of One Man’s Journey.

2006. ISBN-10: 90 04 15312 8, ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15312 7